Background

Human flourishing offers a more inclusive and comprehensive assessment of well-being beyond the absence of mental illness. Research on religion and well-being has generally focused on singular measure of mental or physical well-being and emphasized different stages rather than longer stretches of the life course. This study seeks to address these gaps.

Purpose

We focus on the interaction between transitions in religiosity and educational attainment in predicting flourishing in mid-life adults. By positioning the effects of transitions in religiosity across levels of education—a common axis of stratification for religious belief and behavior—we test the enhanced resource perspective that the better educated may benefit more from sustained or increased religiosity over the life course.

Methods

Data for this study come from MIDUS, a nationally representative sample of United States adults (N = 3030). We created a composite measure of flourishing across the psychological, social, and emotional domains and conducted a series of regression models.

Results

We observed that people with stable high religiosity between childhood and adulthood had the best flourishing profiles, suggesting that the association between religiosity and flourishing may begin to take shape in childhood. We found that both stable high or increases in religiosity between childhood and adulthood were found to be most beneficial for the flourishing scores of the college educated compared to those with less than a college degree. We found no support for the hypothesis that the less educated “substitute” religion as a compensatory mechanism for their deficiency in secular resources.

Conclusion and Implications

While flourishing has typically been excluded as an outcome of study in the burgeoning religion-health literature, the results of the current study suggest much could be learned from its inclusion. At the population level, studying flourishing—with attention to differences by educational and religious dimensions—might represent a more useful way to understand how people can achieve a state of happiness and come to realize more meaningful lives.

中文翻译：

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生命历程和繁荣的宗教信仰：是否存在教育差异？

背景

除了没有精神疾病之外，人类繁荣提供了对福祉的更具包容性和全面性的评估。对宗教和福祉的研究通常侧重于精神或身体福祉的单一衡量标准，并强调不同的阶段，而不是更长的生命历程。本研究旨在解决这些差距。

目的

我们关注宗教信仰转变和教育程度之间的相互作用，以预测中年成年人的繁荣。通过定位跨教育水平的宗教信仰转变的影响——宗教信仰和行为的共同分层轴——我们测试了增强的资源观点，即受过更好教育的人可能从生命过程中持续或增加的宗教信仰中受益更多。

方法

本研究的数据来自 MIDUS，这是一个具有全国代表性的美国成年人样本 (N = 3030)。我们创建了一个跨心理、社会和情感领域的综合衡量指标，并进行了一系列回归模型。

结果

我们观察到，在童年和成年期间具有稳定的高度宗教信仰的人拥有最好的繁荣概况，这表明宗教信仰与繁荣之间的联系可能在童年时期就开始形成。我们发现，与未获得大学学位的人相比，在童年和成年期间稳定的高宗教信仰或宗教信仰的增加对受过大学教育的人的繁荣分数最为有利。我们发现没有证据支持以下假设：受教育程度较低的人“替代”宗教作为他们世俗资源不足的补偿机制。

结论和启示

虽然蓬勃发展通常被排除在新兴的宗教健康文献的研究结果之外，但当前研究的结果表明可以从中学到很多东西。在人口层面，研究繁荣——关注教育和宗教层面的差异——可能代表一种更有用的方式来理解人们如何达到幸福状态并实现更有意义的生活。