Abstract
The association between religion and health is well debated and receives continuous attention in research. Selection bias is often a major concern among the observatory data routinely used worldwide to examine this topic. Adopting the propensity score matching (PSM) method, the present study tries to assess the treatment effects of religion on self-reported health status. The final sample from the 2007 Spiritual Life Study of Chinese Residents (SLSC) contains 6194 valid responses. The average treatment effects (ATEs) estimated by the PSM method show that respondents with religious affiliations are on average significantly more likely to report being very healthy by 5.2 percentage points (by 3.6 and 9.6 percentage points among Buddhists and Protestants), especially, by 16.2 percentage points among those regarding religion as being very important in their lives. Meanwhile, ATEs of religion on reporting being very happy is 17.0 among Protestants and 13.4 among those regarding religion with high importance and 11.3 among those with “regular religious attendance”.
Highlights
The importance of whole person care has been widely recognized, and interests in religion and spirituality continue to grow among public health practitioners (Long et al 2019)
The sizes of the estimated effects by propensity score matching (PSM) are smaller than those by binary probit regression. This phenomenon is because the PSM method helps to control potential self-selection issues, which may inflate the effects of religion estimated by traditional probit model
The coefficients of the Protestantism are insignificant when estimated by the binary probit regression method, the average treatment effects (ATEs) of religion on health estimated by the PSM method are highly significant
Summary
The importance of whole person care has been widely recognized, and interests in religion and spirituality continue to grow among public health practitioners (Long et al 2019). The majority of studies in this filed are often correlational and causal effect cannot be directly inferred There is still ongoing controversy about the causal effect of religion on health outcome due to major concerns about self-selection bias (Cragun et al 2016; Zimmer et al 2016; Idler et al 2017) People with greater propensities to be religious may be good at health maintenance (Chiswick and Mirtcheva 2013; Doane and Elliott 2016; Koenig et al 2012; Levin 1994). People who are sick or in poor health may be more likely to practice religion for comfort or buffering effect (Basedau et al 2017; Inglehart and Norris 2004; Steptoe et al 2015; Doane and Elliott 2016)
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