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The Impact of Worship on Individual’S Well-Being

The Impact of Worship on Individual’S Well-Being Purpose: Individual well-being has been the focus of analysis among rapidly rising number of economists in the world. Especially, after the ground breaking work of Layard (2005), a variety of factors affecting well-being has been identified in the literature. However, despite its prime importance, religion could not get the proper importance in such an analysis. It has been observed by some critics that, for example, GDP ignores the environmental cost a country is bearing, wealth variations between poor and rich, factors impacting the well-being of the individuals like mental health, social relations and personal safety (Anheier and Stares 2002; Fleurbaey 2009, Michaelson et al. 2009). Subjective well-being is the level of satisfaction from an individual's life, environment, relationships and other economic and social matters. Researchers found a number of factors which affect well-being and which are therefore included in the economic and environmental judgment. There are also many non-material factors which can affect well-being, presented in McAllister (2005), including personal relationships (Helliwell and Putnam 2004); social and community relationships (Keyes 1998), employment (Layard 2005); and political regimes (Donovan and Halpern 2003), contextual and situational factors, demographic factors; (iv) institutional factors, (Hoorn 2007). Some studies included religious factors as the determinant of well-being (Hewitt Source 1994, Chang 2003). There have been studies (Iannaccone 1990, 1998, and 2000), (Finke and Stark 1992), (Finke 2003), and (Hamdani 2006) that brought the attention of other researchers towards multi-disciplinary research. The emerging importance to study religion has convinced the social scientists to observe how religion affects different aspects of human behaviour. According to Iannnaccone, (1998) more than 200 papers have been published on religious and the economic impact of religion. Approach/methodology/design: The paper examines weather religiosity, per capita consumption and education index can affect well-being. Using data from the Divine Economic Survey (2000), the study is an application of Divine Economics. Divine economics is a term associated with the study of economics and religion in each other's perspective. Divine economic survey's 2000 data set on 302 household is used in this study. In this survey, prayer index is used which identifies number of obligatory prayers respondent performs daily. The Divine Economic dataset was said to be the largest in the world on religion and economics (Freeman, London School of Economics, 20041). Researchers such as G. Sison et al. used Ordered Logit Model as their dependent variable life satisfaction ­ it is an index which takes values from 1 to 10. Our Well-being index takes values from zero to 100; i.e. it is a sum of responses against a variety of questions. To check the impact of religion we used OLS technique and descriptive analysis for the study. Limitations: Ideally, we should have used the Divine Economic Survey 2009 conducted by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics. However, that data set cannot be used due to copyrights. Therefore, we have used Divine Economics Survey 2000 for our study. A future researcher can obtain access to the later dataset. Findings: The study found that negatively per capita consumption and worship, education index and duty time positively effect on individual's well-being. 1Unpublished official comments on Divine Economics Survey (2000). Keywords: worship; happiness; well-being; religion; religiosity; divine economics. JEL Classification: D6, I31 1. Introduction `Worship is an act of religious devotion usually directed towards a deity' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worship). According to Gill (2005), `prayer is defined as human communication with divine and spiritual entities'. The total world population is around 6.76 billion. Jewish, Christians, and Muslims make around 55% of the world population (www.adherents.com). Worship is highly encouraged in nearly all religions and considered as an important aspect of religious life. In this paper, all these terms - well-being, happiness, life satisfaction and quality of life - will be used interchangeably. Happiness and life satisfaction are used as synonymous in many recent studies (see, for example Caporale et al. 2009 and Cunado and Perez de Gracia 2010 a, b, c). In this paper, we used both happiness and life satisfaction scores as measures of subjective well-being (i.e., dependent variable in our empirical analysis). Major religions including Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Islam are more than a millennium old. Human beings have experienced a lot of changes in social and cultural context since then. Due to inventions and disasters some things may have been eradicated completely or became unnecessary. The question is: why worship has survived till today? Although science has given reasons why earthquakes happen, floods come and kills and removed the myth that this was due to anger of God, people still are busy worshiping their God, going to churches or mosques and paying charity. Over the last few decades happiness has been getting an increasing interest from researchers. Its popularity was limited to sociological and psychological studies; for e.g. Diener (1984), Diener et al. (1995, 1999, 2000). Happiness comes to the focus area of economist because happiness is what individuals are particularly looking for. As Ng (1997) puts it `we want money (or anything else) only as a means to increase our happiness. If having more money does not substantially increase our happiness then money is not very important but happiness is'. The debate has been started by Easterlin (1973) and is still under discussion today. On one hand there are researchers like Easterlin that say that a higher level of income does not generate happiness and on the other hand, theorist such as Stevenson and (Wolfers 2008) claim that increasing income leads to more happiness. Economists have mostly neglected religiosity as a factor in economic decision-making, though a limited literature has been developed in the perspective of Christianity (Hamdani 2004). The main focus of this paper is not contributing in the discussion that either income increases or decreases with happiness or self-satisfaction, but to look closer into the matter and find other hidden variables which affect happiness. In this paper we focus on the relation between the acts of worship and happiness by analysing whether people who do the act of worship are happier than those who do not. During last few decades the literature on well-being (individual life satisfaction, subjected well-being, happiness) has been given an increasing attention by economists. Among those highly admired are: Frey and Stutzer 2002a, b, Easterlin 2005, Clark et al. 2006, Di Tella and MacCullough 2006, Helliwell 2006, Bruni and Porta 2007, Layard 2006, Blanchflower 2008, and Graham 2008. Less empirical attention was given in these studies to the measurement of the impact of religion on happiness. Among few recent papers that analysed the impact of religion on individual life satisfaction are Soydemir et al. 2004, 2005, Witter et al. 1985 and Clark and Lelkes. The concept of utility was incorporated into neoclassical economics in what is called `utility theory'. According to this theory, the level of happiness or utility that an individual achieves is directly related to the level of consumption of goods and/or services. Recently, advances in behavioural psychology have led some academics to re-examine the underlying behavioural assumptions of economics and what factors determine individual economic well-being Economic literature argues that individuals derive well-being from the satisfaction of their wants according to their own preferences. The well-being starts by incorporating traditional utility theory that consumption of goods and services directly effects the well-being In this way consumption is determine by the available income. According to this concept, individuals maximize their well-being through material interest. Countries with higher income have higher average levels of well-being (Diener et al. 1995). This restricted form of well-being is not primarily an ethical principle but an assumption concerning human behaviour. There are also other domains of well-being as health, education, employment and the level of worship (Doug 2007). Religion devotion, for e.g. worship, is positively related to happiness and satisfaction. Religious people are better able to overcome and compete with adverse circumstances. The feelings of being close to God and the belief - are the sources of that happiness (Ellison 1991). Literature review of economics argues that people obtain well-being from fulfilment of their desires according to their own preferences. The assessment of well-being has to rely on proxies because the level of satisfaction cannot be measured directly. One of the most widely used is income, though well-being can be measured with the proxy of real income (Romina Marco 2006). Highlighting the importance and significance of Subjective Well-being (SWB), (Frank 1997, 2005, Layard 1980, 2005a, 2005b and Ng 1977, 1998, 2001, 2003) supported SWB as an objective for policy making. This study is designed under the Divine Economics framework. The Divine Economics is a framework for `the study of economics and religion in each other's perspective' developed by Hamdani 2000, 2001, 2004. `The foundations of the Framework are laid down on standard rational choice theory and the role of religiosity as defined in the Divine religions is incorporated in the scientific model' (http://medlibrary.org/medwiki/Economy_ (Eastern_Orthodox_Church). As the Quran says `Whoever does right, whether male or female, and is a believer, we will make him live a good life, and we will award them their reward for the best of what they used to do' (Quran 16:97). Main objectives of this study: 1. To analyse the Divine Economics Framework (Hamdani,2001) for analysing the per capita consumption, education index, and worship impact on well-being; 2. To find out important indicator of well-being; 3. To analyse impact of worship on individual's happiness. Review of the Literature Despite the fact that there is a growing literature on economics of religion, the relation among religious practices, beliefs and happiness is still an open question for new researchers. The economics of happiness is an approach to assess welfare which combines the techniques typically used by economists with those more commonly used by psychologists. While psychologists have long used surveys of self-reported well-being to study happiness, economists have only recently ventured into this arena. Early economists and philosophers, ranging from Aristotle to Bentham, Mill, and Smith, incorporated the pursuit of happiness in their work. Yet, as economics grew more rigorous and quantitative, more parsimonious definitions of welfare took hold. Researchers found a number of factors which affect well-being, which are included for in economic and environmental judgment. There are also many non-material factors which can affect well-being, presented in (McAllister 2005), including personal relationships (Helliwell and Putnam 2004); social and community relationships (Keyes 1998), employment (Layard 2005); and political regimes (Donovan and Halpern 2003); contextual and situational factors, demographic factors; institutional factors, (Hoorn 2007). Some studies included religious factors as the determinant of well-being (Hewitt Source 1994, Chang 2003). Well-being in Conventional Economics The default measurement of economic and social progress is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but still there are question whether GDP is an adequate indicator of the well-being of countries and their citizens (Dipierto and Anoruo 2006, Eisler 2007, Sen 1999, Stiglitz 2009). GDP ignores the environmental cost a country is bearing, wealth variations between poor and rich, factors impacting well-being of individuals like mental health, social relations and personal safety (Anheier and Stares 2002, Fleurbaey 2009, Michaelson et al. 2009). The history of measuring well-being, happiness and subjective well-being is nearly a half century old (shown in 2500 references in Veenhoven 1993). Different studies have used different notions for subjective well-being that include happiness, well-being, satisfaction, well fare, utility which are interchangeable. An increasing attention has been given to happiness as a subjective indicator in studies on quality of life and standard of living (Blundell et al. 1994, Elster and Roemer 1991 and offer 1996). Layard (2002) indicates that seven factors have effects on happiness: family relationship, health, personal freedom, financial situation, work, community and friends, personal values. Shaimaa and Yasmin (2009) suggest that it has become fashionable for economists and policy makers to adopt happiness as a strategy for development. This is the new emerging viewpoint that it is not enough requirements to increase well-being of people that we increase their income. We know that real income has been rising in the Western countries for a long time, but SWB has not increased. Happiness level and self-satisfaction of Egyptians is studied in the study by using the World Values Survey-Egypt 2008. She found that male, old people and unemployed are unhappy. She also found a strong positive relation between income level and happiness. Higher education was found a non-significant variable whereas secondary education found was a bit better. According to Frey and Stutzer (2003) factors affecting happiness are related to personality and demographics. The personal characteristics of the individuals comprise of: education, marital, age, gender, status. The three most important factors are: income, unemployment and inflation. According to this study, happiness is not increased by high income. That holds for individuals within the same nation. However empirical results show that per happiness and capita income are strongly positively related across nations. Effects of education on well-being were analysed by Helliwell (2002). A multivariate regression was used to analyse the data; the data was taken from the World Values Survey for 46 countries. Results showed that when overall life satisfaction was regressed on education, there is a statistically significant and strong positive association. However, when other individual and national variables were included in the model, the association disappeared. It is factual that at one time rich people are happy than poor but this effect disappears if we look at timeseries. Layard, 2003 found that the overall level of happiness of a society would not change if we multiply income several times. Frey and Stutzer (2002) concluded the same results; they also found that unemployment and inflation affect SWB and self-satisfaction and more democratic institutions can enhance SWB and happiness. Oswald (1997) found that an increase in income raises individual happiness and self-satisfaction. Ferrer-iCarbonell (2005) found that the importance of own income is as important to us as the income of people we usually compare ourselves to. His conclusion was based upon the relationship between reference group income and individual happiness and found strong relationship between both of them. Strulik (2008) found that comparing with reference group is not a strong determinant of happiness; the effect ­ the impact of a wealth loss on happiness level is a bit less for those who compare themselves to others than for those who do not compare at all. Well-being in economics of religion A lot of studies concluded empirically that religion or religiosity level plays a vital role in determining the happiness level of an individual. Religion economics defines how religion affects on attitude and activities of individuals and their satisfaction from life. Ferriss (2002) found happiness associated with the number of times one attend religious services. The same results were observed by Brooks (2008) who found that in the United States, religious attendance is positively correlated with happiness. On the other hand, contrasting results were found by Snoep (2007) who compared data from World Values Survey 2000 for United States, the Netherlands and Denmark and found that in the Netherlands and Denmark ­ unlike from the US ­ there is no correlation between religiosity and happiness. This astonishing result has changed the minds of researcher to think in a different way ­ that religion affects happiness differently for different geographic locations. Opfinger (2010) found a U-shaped relation between religiosity and well-being. He used World Values Survey 1982, 1900, 1995 and 2000; both higher religiosity and lower religiosity reported high happiness levels. According to Opfinger (2010) `the U-shaped pattern for religion and happiness might be due to network effects: religious people are happier if they live in a religious society and so are atheists, if they live in a society in which religion does not play an important role'. Some studies found that religion insures well-being during stressful events like divorce and unemployment, for example, Clark and Lelkes (2005) found that religious people face better adverse events like divorces, separation, unemployment and widowhood. They used ESS for 2002 ­ 2003 and British Household Panel Survey for 1991-1992 and 1992-1993. They found that the religious people report higher life satisfaction and churchgoing and worshiper also have greater satisfaction. Early research, for example Ellison (1991) tried to find the relationship between religion and well-being. He found that religious belief improves individuals' well-being. He found that along with church attendance, strong religious beliefs also improve the level of happiness. Elliott and Hayward (2009) have found that religiosity ­ which they measured with the help of church attendance ­ increases well-being. As we have already mentioned, our main focus is not to study the relationship between income and happiness, which has been discussed by most economists. Easterlin (1973, 1974, 1995 and 2005) found inconsistent results that higher incomes cannot generate an increase in the well-being of a society as a whole. Hewitt Source (1994) examined the connection between religion and well-being in the case of Canadian University students. They used a sample of 299 students and further divided them in two groups out of which 172 are in first group who were members of Christian Clubs, remaining were grouped in second group with no membership in any faith club. Psychological well-being was assessed primarily through the well-known Bradburn Affect-Balance Scale (Bradburn 1969, Bradburn and Caplovitz 1965). They also included a number of composite measures of belief or depth of faith. Using a scale adapted from (Bibby 1987). They found that the affiliated students seem to be more satisfied with their lives and to express more positive psychological states than their non-affiliated counterparts. Research on religion and physical health has revealed a similar pattern regarding the relative strengths of intrinsic versus extrinsic religiosity measures in explaining well-being. Levin and Markides (1986), for example, demonstrated no effect of extrinsic variables such as religious denomination or church attendance on physical well-being. By comparison, measures of inward or intrinsic religiosity appear to be associated with physical well-being in much more consistent fashion. Ferraro and Albrecht-Jensen (1991) found that strength of adherence to religious prescription is positively associated with better health outcomes. Rajeev et al., 2005 examines the impact of individual religious organization involvement as determinant of their stream of consumption and happiness. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX), they studied the impact of contribution to religious organizations by household on income shocks effects on consumption stream. They found strong happiness insurance effects for blacks than whites. Using cross-sectional data from the General Social Survey, (Ellison, 1991) concluded that people who are more religious in terms of beliefs, have less negative impact of accidents which can cause trauma, and their wellbeing is high. Chang (2009) studied the impact of church attendance on SWB in Eastern culture communities. He found strong impact of religiosity of church attendance on well-being and satisfaction from relationships and health. Caldas (2010) studied that the huge amount of money spent every year in purchasing material goods do not seem very effective in increasing consumers happiness. Indeed, higher income and correspondingly expensive consumption do not make people much happier, which implies that current consumerism is extremely inefficient in terms of producing happiness. He used data from 191 countries, including nation-level happiness, life satisfaction, ecological impact, population, and cultural orientation. Available data varied across categories, with a maximum of 178 levels for happiness and ecological impact measures, and a minimum of 65 for cultural dimensions. Besides testing the link between happiness and consumption entropy, the study tested cultural trends as moderators of this relationship by comparing happiness, entropy, materialism, individualism, and economic indexes. He used descriptive statistics, pair wise correlation coefficients and OLS regressions were conducted using SPSS software. Hamburg and Hannover (2011) found a `U' shaped relation in well-being and religiousness. At a certain income level, the same level of well-being can be reached with high and low levels of religiosity, but can't be attained with middle levels. When income increases, happiness increases, but level of religiosity decreases. Well-being in divine economics Divine economic is a branch of economics in which we study economics and religion in each other's perspective. Religion has remained a fundamental feature of social construct and human behaviour. Religious orientation plays an important role in shaping the individual's perceptions about economic and non-economic activities. A testable proposition among religious people welfare is an argument regarding the utility function - if all other variables remain constant, less religious person will serve his/her self interest in each market in less an altruistic manner and a more religious person will serve his/her self interest in each market in a less selfish manner (Hamdani 2004). Zakariya (2009) estimates the subjective well-being in term of self-satisfaction ­ from a sample of 100 in Muzaffarabad city. His study is based on the Divine Economics framework. Some of the testable preposition in the Divine Economics by Hamadani (2004) has been further explored in this study. He analysed that religious perception and regular attendance of prayers affected the subjective well-being positively and religious education and frequent religious audio visual experience also significantly influenced on subjective well-being. According to his study religious capital play an important role in subjective well-being. 2. Data and methodology We used the Divine Economic Survey 2000. The framework of Divine economics was elaborated in working papers and a series of papers in scientific journals and presented at international forums including Harvard University USA, Doctrine of Mahdism Tehran, PIDE and a number of universities in Pakistan. Divine Economics provides analytical framework not only for the divine religions but its generalized form is also equally valid for other religions and rational choice economics Hamdani (2010). Conventional economics provide many determinants of subjective well-being (for e.g.: income, health, democracy etc.) and likewise. This study focused on religiosity as determinant of well-being among Muslims. Although religiosity of people is hard to be measured properly, it can be ranked among different individuals using proxies, such as, with the help of religious knowledge and practices. In other words, religiosity can be proxies from the activities revealed to be preferred by the individual in a given religious doctrine (Hamdani 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004). We also check the proposition that tells us that human pleasure is not only a function of goods and services consumed, but also of the overall quality of life which is interdependent with the nature of the goods and services consumed (prohibited or allowed; normatively good or bad), therefore, a more religious person's utility function must be viewed from the perspective of desirable (normatively good or bad) characteristics of such goods and service. Moreover, time allocation plays a significant role in reshaping the well-being level. People with more religious orientation have different time allocation patter as their less religious counterparts. One can infer from here that due to different time allocation patter, they may have different level of well-being (Hamdani 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004). Data We used the Divine Economics Survey (DES) 2000 for this study. The questionnaire used for collecting the data has very comprehensive information on individual religiosity and well-being level. There are many indexes available in DES, but we used the most simples and convenient index of religiosity measurement that is number of five time prayers respondent offer on daily basis. Happiness and satisfaction are usually measured on a 5-7 point ordinal scale, and hence an Ordered Probit and structure equation modelling would be the most appropriate or best econometric technique for analyse the well-being or satisfaction. But this study used OLS because our data set provides us a index of well-being so OLS is the best technique to deal with continuous data. Along with education index and per capita income the third explanatory variable is prayer index. This index shows the frequency of prayer offered by the individuals. This index is used as proxy of worship because all the respondents in the data set were Muslims. We follow divine economics model in our study and the model is the following: Model Divine Economics Model, according to Hamdani (2004) the individual utility maximizing function is: U = f (C, D, L, V, R), where: C ­ Annual Expenditure (in rupees) excluding charity and social expenses, D ­ money value (in rupees) of annual charitable donations given to individual and organizations, L ­ Time allocated to leisure, V ­ number of hours allocated to voluntary activities, R ­ Time allocated to religious activities (worship, learning, preaching. Like Layard (2002) indicates that seven factors affect happiness: family relationship, health, personal freedom, financial situation, work, community and friends, personal values, our theoretical model is based on the following variables: IWB = f (education index, individual's duty time, prayer, per capita consumption). Dependent variable = IWB Independent = education index, individual's duty time, prayer, per capita consumption. Empirical model IWB = o+ 1 per capita consumption + 2prayer + 3 duty time+ 4 education index+ U, Where: IWB ­ individuals well-being - per capita consumption = per person consumption in a month, Prayer ­ five time prayers and reciting Quran daily, Education index ­ general and religious education (in years), Duty time = 0 for morning time and 1 for evening or night time daily, o ­ intercept in the model, s' ­ coefficients of variables in the model. Hypothesis testing If explanatory variables not affect on well-being we accept null hypothesis and if there exists any significant relationship, we accept alternative hypothesis. Survey methodology The study used the secondary data for this analysis. 3. Results and discussion This chapter presents the descriptive analysis and regression results. Descriptive Analysis Table 1. Descriptive statistics of variables analysis N Per capita consumption Prayer Duty time Education index IWB 302 302 302 302 302 MIN 1500 0 0 0 0 MAX 288909.584 5 1 16.00 95.96 MEAN 24058.8902 3.88 0.10 9.345453390 60.5591022 STD.DEVIATION 23487.9502718 1.623 .300 3.06163852097 15.9983595 In the table above we analyse descriptive statistics of different variables. we show maximum, minimum and mean of variables are described which indicates that our respondent's minimum education is zero and max 16 years and mean is 9.34 of education so here we show all variables maximum, minimum value, mean and standard deviation to describe the data. Table 2. Chi Square Tests of per capita consumption and IWB Values Pearson chi square Likelihood ratio Linear by linear association No. of valid cases 29773.18 2636.11 4.562 302 29252 29252 1 .016 1.00 .033 df Asymp.sig .2sided The Chi square shows the relationship between per capita consumption and IWB. The above table shows there is a significant relationship between both of these variables. Table 3. Chi Square Tests of prayer and IWB Values Person chi square Likelihood ratio Linear by linear association No of valid cases 582.0 425.31 9.03 302 515 515 1 0.021 .998 .003 df Asymp.sig .2sided The table above shows the effect of prayer on IWB. The result shows there is a significant relationship between the individual's well-being and prayer. Table 4. Chi .Square Tests of duty time and IWB Values Person chi square Likelihood ratio Linear by linear association No of valid cases 114.932 95.867 6.224 302 103 103 1 0.198 .678 .013 df Asymp.sig .2sided The above table shows the effect of duty time on IWB. The result shows there is a weak significant relationship between the individual's well-being and duty time like morning and evening. Table 5. Chi-Square Tests of education index and IWB Values Pearson chi square Likelihood ratio Linear by linear association No of valid cases 17477.87 2203.56 4.401 302 16686 16686 1 0.00 1.00 0.36 df Asymp.sig .2sided The table above shows the significant relationship between the education index and IWB. The result shows there is a strong significant relationship between individual's well-being and education index. Regression Results OLS technique is used to estimate the effects of explanatory variables on IWB. The regression Results are given below: Table 6. The regression results Coefficients Model Intercept Per capita consumption Prayer Duty time Education index Dependent Variable: IWB F.6.490Sig.000 Beta 49.05 -8.90E-005 1.514 7.536 0.751 R squares .080 Adjusted Rsequare.068 SE. 15.44 Observation 302 13.441 -2.267 2.724 2.534 2.526 .000 .024 .007 .012 .012 T ratio Sig or p value The results above show that the goodness of fit value of the model is .08 which shows that in the individual's well-being independent variables explained an 8% variation .This study used cross sectional data so that data individual significance of the explanatory variables is more important than joint significance level. The F value also supports the arguments with value and shows that the parameters are significant. The results show prayer and education index have a strong positive effect on IWB and that this findings support the earlier studies like that of Helliwell (2002) that found effects of education on well-being. He found that overall life satisfaction is related with education and strong positive association and Ferriss (2002) found that happiness is associated with the number of times one attend religious services. Same results were observed by Brooks (2008) who found that in the United States religious attendance is positively correlated with happiness. Early research, for example Ellison (1991) tried to find the relationship between religion and well-being. He found that religious belief improves individuals' well-being. He found that along with church attendance, strong religious beliefs also improve the level of the happiness. In our results duty time positively affect the well-being. These studies fully support our results that offering five time prayer daily has strongly positively impact on individuals well-being. There is also a positive impact of duty time on IWB that show that morning or night duty timing doesn't negatively affect the individual's well-being. Caldas (2010) studied that the huge amount of money spent every year in purchasing material goods do not seem very effective in increasing the consumers' happiness. Indeed, higher income and correspondingly expensive consumption do not make people much happier, which implies that current consumerism is extremely inefficient in terms of producing happiness. The study of Caldas supports our results, because according to our results, per person consumption affect the IWB but in a negative manner. So, in our model all explanatory variables have significant impact on the individual's well-being. 4. Concluding remarks This study is an attempt to explore the relationship between worship and individual well-being. Individual well-being is measured in terms of life satisfaction derived from education, consumption, and devotion to religion such as worship .The analysis is based upon the cross sectional data, collected by the Divine Economics Survey in 2000. The OLS technique is used to analyze the data, descriptive analysis and applied for this study. Education, prayers have positive effect on IWB, per capita consumption has negatively effect the individual's wellbeing. Variation in independent variable is small because there may be problems in collecting data; but these tentative results are a support and open a new horizon for future researchers to work in this field. References [1] Alem, Y. and Martinsson, P. 2010. Subjective well-being and its determinants in urban Ethiopia. Social Science and Medicine 58: 1671­1688. [2] Bardasi, E. and Francesconi, M. 2003. The Impact of a typical employment on Individual Well-being: Evidence from a Panel of British Workers. Working Papers of the Institute for Social and Economic Research, Colchester, University of Essex. [3] Bruno, S. and Stutzer, A. 2003. Testing theories of happiness. Institute for Empirical Research in Economics, University of Zurich, Working Economics and Happiness. 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The Egyptian Cabinet Information and Decision Support Centre Economic Issues Program. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Advanced Research in Law and Economics de Gruyter

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Abstract

Purpose: Individual well-being has been the focus of analysis among rapidly rising number of economists in the world. Especially, after the ground breaking work of Layard (2005), a variety of factors affecting well-being has been identified in the literature. However, despite its prime importance, religion could not get the proper importance in such an analysis. It has been observed by some critics that, for example, GDP ignores the environmental cost a country is bearing, wealth variations between poor and rich, factors impacting the well-being of the individuals like mental health, social relations and personal safety (Anheier and Stares 2002; Fleurbaey 2009, Michaelson et al. 2009). Subjective well-being is the level of satisfaction from an individual's life, environment, relationships and other economic and social matters. Researchers found a number of factors which affect well-being and which are therefore included in the economic and environmental judgment. There are also many non-material factors which can affect well-being, presented in McAllister (2005), including personal relationships (Helliwell and Putnam 2004); social and community relationships (Keyes 1998), employment (Layard 2005); and political regimes (Donovan and Halpern 2003), contextual and situational factors, demographic factors; (iv) institutional factors, (Hoorn 2007). Some studies included religious factors as the determinant of well-being (Hewitt Source 1994, Chang 2003). There have been studies (Iannaccone 1990, 1998, and 2000), (Finke and Stark 1992), (Finke 2003), and (Hamdani 2006) that brought the attention of other researchers towards multi-disciplinary research. The emerging importance to study religion has convinced the social scientists to observe how religion affects different aspects of human behaviour. According to Iannnaccone, (1998) more than 200 papers have been published on religious and the economic impact of religion. Approach/methodology/design: The paper examines weather religiosity, per capita consumption and education index can affect well-being. Using data from the Divine Economic Survey (2000), the study is an application of Divine Economics. Divine economics is a term associated with the study of economics and religion in each other's perspective. Divine economic survey's 2000 data set on 302 household is used in this study. In this survey, prayer index is used which identifies number of obligatory prayers respondent performs daily. The Divine Economic dataset was said to be the largest in the world on religion and economics (Freeman, London School of Economics, 20041). Researchers such as G. Sison et al. used Ordered Logit Model as their dependent variable life satisfaction ­ it is an index which takes values from 1 to 10. Our Well-being index takes values from zero to 100; i.e. it is a sum of responses against a variety of questions. To check the impact of religion we used OLS technique and descriptive analysis for the study. Limitations: Ideally, we should have used the Divine Economic Survey 2009 conducted by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics. However, that data set cannot be used due to copyrights. Therefore, we have used Divine Economics Survey 2000 for our study. A future researcher can obtain access to the later dataset. Findings: The study found that negatively per capita consumption and worship, education index and duty time positively effect on individual's well-being. 1Unpublished official comments on Divine Economics Survey (2000). Keywords: worship; happiness; well-being; religion; religiosity; divine economics. JEL Classification: D6, I31 1. Introduction `Worship is an act of religious devotion usually directed towards a deity' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worship). According to Gill (2005), `prayer is defined as human communication with divine and spiritual entities'. The total world population is around 6.76 billion. Jewish, Christians, and Muslims make around 55% of the world population (www.adherents.com). Worship is highly encouraged in nearly all religions and considered as an important aspect of religious life. In this paper, all these terms - well-being, happiness, life satisfaction and quality of life - will be used interchangeably. Happiness and life satisfaction are used as synonymous in many recent studies (see, for example Caporale et al. 2009 and Cunado and Perez de Gracia 2010 a, b, c). In this paper, we used both happiness and life satisfaction scores as measures of subjective well-being (i.e., dependent variable in our empirical analysis). Major religions including Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and Islam are more than a millennium old. Human beings have experienced a lot of changes in social and cultural context since then. Due to inventions and disasters some things may have been eradicated completely or became unnecessary. The question is: why worship has survived till today? Although science has given reasons why earthquakes happen, floods come and kills and removed the myth that this was due to anger of God, people still are busy worshiping their God, going to churches or mosques and paying charity. Over the last few decades happiness has been getting an increasing interest from researchers. Its popularity was limited to sociological and psychological studies; for e.g. Diener (1984), Diener et al. (1995, 1999, 2000). Happiness comes to the focus area of economist because happiness is what individuals are particularly looking for. As Ng (1997) puts it `we want money (or anything else) only as a means to increase our happiness. If having more money does not substantially increase our happiness then money is not very important but happiness is'. The debate has been started by Easterlin (1973) and is still under discussion today. On one hand there are researchers like Easterlin that say that a higher level of income does not generate happiness and on the other hand, theorist such as Stevenson and (Wolfers 2008) claim that increasing income leads to more happiness. Economists have mostly neglected religiosity as a factor in economic decision-making, though a limited literature has been developed in the perspective of Christianity (Hamdani 2004). The main focus of this paper is not contributing in the discussion that either income increases or decreases with happiness or self-satisfaction, but to look closer into the matter and find other hidden variables which affect happiness. In this paper we focus on the relation between the acts of worship and happiness by analysing whether people who do the act of worship are happier than those who do not. During last few decades the literature on well-being (individual life satisfaction, subjected well-being, happiness) has been given an increasing attention by economists. Among those highly admired are: Frey and Stutzer 2002a, b, Easterlin 2005, Clark et al. 2006, Di Tella and MacCullough 2006, Helliwell 2006, Bruni and Porta 2007, Layard 2006, Blanchflower 2008, and Graham 2008. Less empirical attention was given in these studies to the measurement of the impact of religion on happiness. Among few recent papers that analysed the impact of religion on individual life satisfaction are Soydemir et al. 2004, 2005, Witter et al. 1985 and Clark and Lelkes. The concept of utility was incorporated into neoclassical economics in what is called `utility theory'. According to this theory, the level of happiness or utility that an individual achieves is directly related to the level of consumption of goods and/or services. Recently, advances in behavioural psychology have led some academics to re-examine the underlying behavioural assumptions of economics and what factors determine individual economic well-being Economic literature argues that individuals derive well-being from the satisfaction of their wants according to their own preferences. The well-being starts by incorporating traditional utility theory that consumption of goods and services directly effects the well-being In this way consumption is determine by the available income. According to this concept, individuals maximize their well-being through material interest. Countries with higher income have higher average levels of well-being (Diener et al. 1995). This restricted form of well-being is not primarily an ethical principle but an assumption concerning human behaviour. There are also other domains of well-being as health, education, employment and the level of worship (Doug 2007). Religion devotion, for e.g. worship, is positively related to happiness and satisfaction. Religious people are better able to overcome and compete with adverse circumstances. The feelings of being close to God and the belief - are the sources of that happiness (Ellison 1991). Literature review of economics argues that people obtain well-being from fulfilment of their desires according to their own preferences. The assessment of well-being has to rely on proxies because the level of satisfaction cannot be measured directly. One of the most widely used is income, though well-being can be measured with the proxy of real income (Romina Marco 2006). Highlighting the importance and significance of Subjective Well-being (SWB), (Frank 1997, 2005, Layard 1980, 2005a, 2005b and Ng 1977, 1998, 2001, 2003) supported SWB as an objective for policy making. This study is designed under the Divine Economics framework. The Divine Economics is a framework for `the study of economics and religion in each other's perspective' developed by Hamdani 2000, 2001, 2004. `The foundations of the Framework are laid down on standard rational choice theory and the role of religiosity as defined in the Divine religions is incorporated in the scientific model' (http://medlibrary.org/medwiki/Economy_ (Eastern_Orthodox_Church). As the Quran says `Whoever does right, whether male or female, and is a believer, we will make him live a good life, and we will award them their reward for the best of what they used to do' (Quran 16:97). Main objectives of this study: 1. To analyse the Divine Economics Framework (Hamdani,2001) for analysing the per capita consumption, education index, and worship impact on well-being; 2. To find out important indicator of well-being; 3. To analyse impact of worship on individual's happiness. Review of the Literature Despite the fact that there is a growing literature on economics of religion, the relation among religious practices, beliefs and happiness is still an open question for new researchers. The economics of happiness is an approach to assess welfare which combines the techniques typically used by economists with those more commonly used by psychologists. While psychologists have long used surveys of self-reported well-being to study happiness, economists have only recently ventured into this arena. Early economists and philosophers, ranging from Aristotle to Bentham, Mill, and Smith, incorporated the pursuit of happiness in their work. Yet, as economics grew more rigorous and quantitative, more parsimonious definitions of welfare took hold. Researchers found a number of factors which affect well-being, which are included for in economic and environmental judgment. There are also many non-material factors which can affect well-being, presented in (McAllister 2005), including personal relationships (Helliwell and Putnam 2004); social and community relationships (Keyes 1998), employment (Layard 2005); and political regimes (Donovan and Halpern 2003); contextual and situational factors, demographic factors; institutional factors, (Hoorn 2007). Some studies included religious factors as the determinant of well-being (Hewitt Source 1994, Chang 2003). Well-being in Conventional Economics The default measurement of economic and social progress is the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) but still there are question whether GDP is an adequate indicator of the well-being of countries and their citizens (Dipierto and Anoruo 2006, Eisler 2007, Sen 1999, Stiglitz 2009). GDP ignores the environmental cost a country is bearing, wealth variations between poor and rich, factors impacting well-being of individuals like mental health, social relations and personal safety (Anheier and Stares 2002, Fleurbaey 2009, Michaelson et al. 2009). The history of measuring well-being, happiness and subjective well-being is nearly a half century old (shown in 2500 references in Veenhoven 1993). Different studies have used different notions for subjective well-being that include happiness, well-being, satisfaction, well fare, utility which are interchangeable. An increasing attention has been given to happiness as a subjective indicator in studies on quality of life and standard of living (Blundell et al. 1994, Elster and Roemer 1991 and offer 1996). Layard (2002) indicates that seven factors have effects on happiness: family relationship, health, personal freedom, financial situation, work, community and friends, personal values. Shaimaa and Yasmin (2009) suggest that it has become fashionable for economists and policy makers to adopt happiness as a strategy for development. This is the new emerging viewpoint that it is not enough requirements to increase well-being of people that we increase their income. We know that real income has been rising in the Western countries for a long time, but SWB has not increased. Happiness level and self-satisfaction of Egyptians is studied in the study by using the World Values Survey-Egypt 2008. She found that male, old people and unemployed are unhappy. She also found a strong positive relation between income level and happiness. Higher education was found a non-significant variable whereas secondary education found was a bit better. According to Frey and Stutzer (2003) factors affecting happiness are related to personality and demographics. The personal characteristics of the individuals comprise of: education, marital, age, gender, status. The three most important factors are: income, unemployment and inflation. According to this study, happiness is not increased by high income. That holds for individuals within the same nation. However empirical results show that per happiness and capita income are strongly positively related across nations. Effects of education on well-being were analysed by Helliwell (2002). A multivariate regression was used to analyse the data; the data was taken from the World Values Survey for 46 countries. Results showed that when overall life satisfaction was regressed on education, there is a statistically significant and strong positive association. However, when other individual and national variables were included in the model, the association disappeared. It is factual that at one time rich people are happy than poor but this effect disappears if we look at timeseries. Layard, 2003 found that the overall level of happiness of a society would not change if we multiply income several times. Frey and Stutzer (2002) concluded the same results; they also found that unemployment and inflation affect SWB and self-satisfaction and more democratic institutions can enhance SWB and happiness. Oswald (1997) found that an increase in income raises individual happiness and self-satisfaction. Ferrer-iCarbonell (2005) found that the importance of own income is as important to us as the income of people we usually compare ourselves to. His conclusion was based upon the relationship between reference group income and individual happiness and found strong relationship between both of them. Strulik (2008) found that comparing with reference group is not a strong determinant of happiness; the effect ­ the impact of a wealth loss on happiness level is a bit less for those who compare themselves to others than for those who do not compare at all. Well-being in economics of religion A lot of studies concluded empirically that religion or religiosity level plays a vital role in determining the happiness level of an individual. Religion economics defines how religion affects on attitude and activities of individuals and their satisfaction from life. Ferriss (2002) found happiness associated with the number of times one attend religious services. The same results were observed by Brooks (2008) who found that in the United States, religious attendance is positively correlated with happiness. On the other hand, contrasting results were found by Snoep (2007) who compared data from World Values Survey 2000 for United States, the Netherlands and Denmark and found that in the Netherlands and Denmark ­ unlike from the US ­ there is no correlation between religiosity and happiness. This astonishing result has changed the minds of researcher to think in a different way ­ that religion affects happiness differently for different geographic locations. Opfinger (2010) found a U-shaped relation between religiosity and well-being. He used World Values Survey 1982, 1900, 1995 and 2000; both higher religiosity and lower religiosity reported high happiness levels. According to Opfinger (2010) `the U-shaped pattern for religion and happiness might be due to network effects: religious people are happier if they live in a religious society and so are atheists, if they live in a society in which religion does not play an important role'. Some studies found that religion insures well-being during stressful events like divorce and unemployment, for example, Clark and Lelkes (2005) found that religious people face better adverse events like divorces, separation, unemployment and widowhood. They used ESS for 2002 ­ 2003 and British Household Panel Survey for 1991-1992 and 1992-1993. They found that the religious people report higher life satisfaction and churchgoing and worshiper also have greater satisfaction. Early research, for example Ellison (1991) tried to find the relationship between religion and well-being. He found that religious belief improves individuals' well-being. He found that along with church attendance, strong religious beliefs also improve the level of happiness. Elliott and Hayward (2009) have found that religiosity ­ which they measured with the help of church attendance ­ increases well-being. As we have already mentioned, our main focus is not to study the relationship between income and happiness, which has been discussed by most economists. Easterlin (1973, 1974, 1995 and 2005) found inconsistent results that higher incomes cannot generate an increase in the well-being of a society as a whole. Hewitt Source (1994) examined the connection between religion and well-being in the case of Canadian University students. They used a sample of 299 students and further divided them in two groups out of which 172 are in first group who were members of Christian Clubs, remaining were grouped in second group with no membership in any faith club. Psychological well-being was assessed primarily through the well-known Bradburn Affect-Balance Scale (Bradburn 1969, Bradburn and Caplovitz 1965). They also included a number of composite measures of belief or depth of faith. Using a scale adapted from (Bibby 1987). They found that the affiliated students seem to be more satisfied with their lives and to express more positive psychological states than their non-affiliated counterparts. Research on religion and physical health has revealed a similar pattern regarding the relative strengths of intrinsic versus extrinsic religiosity measures in explaining well-being. Levin and Markides (1986), for example, demonstrated no effect of extrinsic variables such as religious denomination or church attendance on physical well-being. By comparison, measures of inward or intrinsic religiosity appear to be associated with physical well-being in much more consistent fashion. Ferraro and Albrecht-Jensen (1991) found that strength of adherence to religious prescription is positively associated with better health outcomes. Rajeev et al., 2005 examines the impact of individual religious organization involvement as determinant of their stream of consumption and happiness. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX), they studied the impact of contribution to religious organizations by household on income shocks effects on consumption stream. They found strong happiness insurance effects for blacks than whites. Using cross-sectional data from the General Social Survey, (Ellison, 1991) concluded that people who are more religious in terms of beliefs, have less negative impact of accidents which can cause trauma, and their wellbeing is high. Chang (2009) studied the impact of church attendance on SWB in Eastern culture communities. He found strong impact of religiosity of church attendance on well-being and satisfaction from relationships and health. Caldas (2010) studied that the huge amount of money spent every year in purchasing material goods do not seem very effective in increasing consumers happiness. Indeed, higher income and correspondingly expensive consumption do not make people much happier, which implies that current consumerism is extremely inefficient in terms of producing happiness. He used data from 191 countries, including nation-level happiness, life satisfaction, ecological impact, population, and cultural orientation. Available data varied across categories, with a maximum of 178 levels for happiness and ecological impact measures, and a minimum of 65 for cultural dimensions. Besides testing the link between happiness and consumption entropy, the study tested cultural trends as moderators of this relationship by comparing happiness, entropy, materialism, individualism, and economic indexes. He used descriptive statistics, pair wise correlation coefficients and OLS regressions were conducted using SPSS software. Hamburg and Hannover (2011) found a `U' shaped relation in well-being and religiousness. At a certain income level, the same level of well-being can be reached with high and low levels of religiosity, but can't be attained with middle levels. When income increases, happiness increases, but level of religiosity decreases. Well-being in divine economics Divine economic is a branch of economics in which we study economics and religion in each other's perspective. Religion has remained a fundamental feature of social construct and human behaviour. Religious orientation plays an important role in shaping the individual's perceptions about economic and non-economic activities. A testable proposition among religious people welfare is an argument regarding the utility function - if all other variables remain constant, less religious person will serve his/her self interest in each market in less an altruistic manner and a more religious person will serve his/her self interest in each market in a less selfish manner (Hamdani 2004). Zakariya (2009) estimates the subjective well-being in term of self-satisfaction ­ from a sample of 100 in Muzaffarabad city. His study is based on the Divine Economics framework. Some of the testable preposition in the Divine Economics by Hamadani (2004) has been further explored in this study. He analysed that religious perception and regular attendance of prayers affected the subjective well-being positively and religious education and frequent religious audio visual experience also significantly influenced on subjective well-being. According to his study religious capital play an important role in subjective well-being. 2. Data and methodology We used the Divine Economic Survey 2000. The framework of Divine economics was elaborated in working papers and a series of papers in scientific journals and presented at international forums including Harvard University USA, Doctrine of Mahdism Tehran, PIDE and a number of universities in Pakistan. Divine Economics provides analytical framework not only for the divine religions but its generalized form is also equally valid for other religions and rational choice economics Hamdani (2010). Conventional economics provide many determinants of subjective well-being (for e.g.: income, health, democracy etc.) and likewise. This study focused on religiosity as determinant of well-being among Muslims. Although religiosity of people is hard to be measured properly, it can be ranked among different individuals using proxies, such as, with the help of religious knowledge and practices. In other words, religiosity can be proxies from the activities revealed to be preferred by the individual in a given religious doctrine (Hamdani 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2004). We also check the proposition that tells us that human pleasure is not only a function of goods and services consumed, but also of the overall quality of life which is interdependent with the nature of the goods and services consumed (prohibited or allowed; normatively good or bad), therefore, a more religious person's utility function must be viewed from the perspective of desirable (normatively good or bad) characteristics of such goods and service. Moreover, time allocation plays a significant role in reshaping the well-being level. People with more religious orientation have different time allocation patter as their less religious counterparts. One can infer from here that due to different time allocation patter, they may have different level of well-being (Hamdani 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004). Data We used the Divine Economics Survey (DES) 2000 for this study. The questionnaire used for collecting the data has very comprehensive information on individual religiosity and well-being level. There are many indexes available in DES, but we used the most simples and convenient index of religiosity measurement that is number of five time prayers respondent offer on daily basis. Happiness and satisfaction are usually measured on a 5-7 point ordinal scale, and hence an Ordered Probit and structure equation modelling would be the most appropriate or best econometric technique for analyse the well-being or satisfaction. But this study used OLS because our data set provides us a index of well-being so OLS is the best technique to deal with continuous data. Along with education index and per capita income the third explanatory variable is prayer index. This index shows the frequency of prayer offered by the individuals. This index is used as proxy of worship because all the respondents in the data set were Muslims. We follow divine economics model in our study and the model is the following: Model Divine Economics Model, according to Hamdani (2004) the individual utility maximizing function is: U = f (C, D, L, V, R), where: C ­ Annual Expenditure (in rupees) excluding charity and social expenses, D ­ money value (in rupees) of annual charitable donations given to individual and organizations, L ­ Time allocated to leisure, V ­ number of hours allocated to voluntary activities, R ­ Time allocated to religious activities (worship, learning, preaching. Like Layard (2002) indicates that seven factors affect happiness: family relationship, health, personal freedom, financial situation, work, community and friends, personal values, our theoretical model is based on the following variables: IWB = f (education index, individual's duty time, prayer, per capita consumption). Dependent variable = IWB Independent = education index, individual's duty time, prayer, per capita consumption. Empirical model IWB = o+ 1 per capita consumption + 2prayer + 3 duty time+ 4 education index+ U, Where: IWB ­ individuals well-being - per capita consumption = per person consumption in a month, Prayer ­ five time prayers and reciting Quran daily, Education index ­ general and religious education (in years), Duty time = 0 for morning time and 1 for evening or night time daily, o ­ intercept in the model, s' ­ coefficients of variables in the model. Hypothesis testing If explanatory variables not affect on well-being we accept null hypothesis and if there exists any significant relationship, we accept alternative hypothesis. Survey methodology The study used the secondary data for this analysis. 3. Results and discussion This chapter presents the descriptive analysis and regression results. Descriptive Analysis Table 1. Descriptive statistics of variables analysis N Per capita consumption Prayer Duty time Education index IWB 302 302 302 302 302 MIN 1500 0 0 0 0 MAX 288909.584 5 1 16.00 95.96 MEAN 24058.8902 3.88 0.10 9.345453390 60.5591022 STD.DEVIATION 23487.9502718 1.623 .300 3.06163852097 15.9983595 In the table above we analyse descriptive statistics of different variables. we show maximum, minimum and mean of variables are described which indicates that our respondent's minimum education is zero and max 16 years and mean is 9.34 of education so here we show all variables maximum, minimum value, mean and standard deviation to describe the data. Table 2. Chi Square Tests of per capita consumption and IWB Values Pearson chi square Likelihood ratio Linear by linear association No. of valid cases 29773.18 2636.11 4.562 302 29252 29252 1 .016 1.00 .033 df Asymp.sig .2sided The Chi square shows the relationship between per capita consumption and IWB. The above table shows there is a significant relationship between both of these variables. Table 3. Chi Square Tests of prayer and IWB Values Person chi square Likelihood ratio Linear by linear association No of valid cases 582.0 425.31 9.03 302 515 515 1 0.021 .998 .003 df Asymp.sig .2sided The table above shows the effect of prayer on IWB. The result shows there is a significant relationship between the individual's well-being and prayer. Table 4. Chi .Square Tests of duty time and IWB Values Person chi square Likelihood ratio Linear by linear association No of valid cases 114.932 95.867 6.224 302 103 103 1 0.198 .678 .013 df Asymp.sig .2sided The above table shows the effect of duty time on IWB. The result shows there is a weak significant relationship between the individual's well-being and duty time like morning and evening. Table 5. Chi-Square Tests of education index and IWB Values Pearson chi square Likelihood ratio Linear by linear association No of valid cases 17477.87 2203.56 4.401 302 16686 16686 1 0.00 1.00 0.36 df Asymp.sig .2sided The table above shows the significant relationship between the education index and IWB. The result shows there is a strong significant relationship between individual's well-being and education index. Regression Results OLS technique is used to estimate the effects of explanatory variables on IWB. The regression Results are given below: Table 6. The regression results Coefficients Model Intercept Per capita consumption Prayer Duty time Education index Dependent Variable: IWB F.6.490Sig.000 Beta 49.05 -8.90E-005 1.514 7.536 0.751 R squares .080 Adjusted Rsequare.068 SE. 15.44 Observation 302 13.441 -2.267 2.724 2.534 2.526 .000 .024 .007 .012 .012 T ratio Sig or p value The results above show that the goodness of fit value of the model is .08 which shows that in the individual's well-being independent variables explained an 8% variation .This study used cross sectional data so that data individual significance of the explanatory variables is more important than joint significance level. The F value also supports the arguments with value and shows that the parameters are significant. The results show prayer and education index have a strong positive effect on IWB and that this findings support the earlier studies like that of Helliwell (2002) that found effects of education on well-being. He found that overall life satisfaction is related with education and strong positive association and Ferriss (2002) found that happiness is associated with the number of times one attend religious services. Same results were observed by Brooks (2008) who found that in the United States religious attendance is positively correlated with happiness. Early research, for example Ellison (1991) tried to find the relationship between religion and well-being. He found that religious belief improves individuals' well-being. He found that along with church attendance, strong religious beliefs also improve the level of the happiness. In our results duty time positively affect the well-being. These studies fully support our results that offering five time prayer daily has strongly positively impact on individuals well-being. There is also a positive impact of duty time on IWB that show that morning or night duty timing doesn't negatively affect the individual's well-being. Caldas (2010) studied that the huge amount of money spent every year in purchasing material goods do not seem very effective in increasing the consumers' happiness. Indeed, higher income and correspondingly expensive consumption do not make people much happier, which implies that current consumerism is extremely inefficient in terms of producing happiness. The study of Caldas supports our results, because according to our results, per person consumption affect the IWB but in a negative manner. So, in our model all explanatory variables have significant impact on the individual's well-being. 4. Concluding remarks This study is an attempt to explore the relationship between worship and individual well-being. Individual well-being is measured in terms of life satisfaction derived from education, consumption, and devotion to religion such as worship .The analysis is based upon the cross sectional data, collected by the Divine Economics Survey in 2000. 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The Egyptian Cabinet Information and Decision Support Centre Economic Issues Program.

Journal

Journal of Advanced Research in Law and Economicsde Gruyter

Published: Dec 1, 2012

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