Exposure to natural disasters increases religiosity even controlling for income and education

Evidence

There is more evidence that external threats to life and well-being encourage religiosity. In a global analysis of 800 geographic regions in the world, people who are exposed to natural disasters (such as earthquakes, volcano eruptions, tropical storms) were found to be more religious, even after other factors, such as income, education, and denomination are taken into account. Moreover, immigrants in Europe whose mothers came from disaster-prone areas are more religious. This latter finding speaks against the alternative idea that the reason for why there is more religiosity in disaster-prone areas is because religious people are more likely to stay put (perhaps because they may see these uncontrollable events as God’s will). — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 617

Categorization

• XREF: Supports the environmental-instability-to-religiosity causal chain the reader is building across Norenzayan, Baumard, and Silence.
• CANDY: A clean, surprising elevator fact: immigrants from disaster-prone regions stay religious even when they themselves never experienced disaster.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 617