Here is a very interesting article from today's local paper. A reseacher from Ohio State University is showing that American Jews develop substantially more wealth than Christians, including JWs, based upon education and early investments.....
http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2003/09/25/20030925-C1-04.html
OSU SOCIOLOGIST’S STUDY Jews criticize research linking wealth, religion Thursday, September 25, 2003 Felix Hoover THE COLUMBUS DISPATCHReligion-based family values such as education and early investment appear to explain why American Jews develop substantially more wealth than Christians do, says a new study from Ohio State University.
The study by Lisa A. Keister, an associate professor of sociology, also says conservative Protestants lag in generating wealth, perhaps in part because their faith focuses more on rewards in the hereafter.
Keister said she wants to know why some American families develop wealth while others never do.
"My objective is to explain wealth and equality and to examine why 20 percent of the people have no wealth at all," said Keister, who has conducted other research on assetbuilding as it relates to race and other factors.
But her latest work drew criticism from Jewish leaders, who said they worry that it might foster anti-Semitic stereotypes.
"The question of religion and wealth is too complicated, and I don’t think it was treated very seriously" in Keister’s study, said Ken Jacobson, associate national director of the Anti-Defamation League in New York.
"It plays into these ideas of Jews and money that have been so troubling for so long."
The study also drew objections from Marsha Hurwitz, president and CEO of the Columbus Jewish Federation.
"In recent years, Professor Keister has developed a particular point of view regarding wealth in America," Hurwitz said by e-mail.
"While we respect Professor Keister’s right to express her opinions, we believe that many, many factors influence how we develop as individuals. Focusing on one aspect of a person’s life, at the expense of other important factors, can be misleading and do a disservice."
Keister’s study uses data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, conducted by Ohio State for the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. It follows a group of people over time, surveying them once or twice a year. Keister used data collected from 4,950 participants from 1985 to 1998.
Her findings appear in the September issue of Social Forces, a journal associated with the Southern Sociological Society at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Jews ranked highest in net worth, with a median of $150,890, triple that of the group as a whole. Conservative Protestants — including Baptists, Christian Scientists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventhday Adventists — showed a median net worth of $26,200. Mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics each reported net worths of about $62,000.
Keister, whose religious background is Roman Catholic and whose specialty is economics, said the survey is not an attempt to stereotype.
What goes on in families is the key to building wealth, she said. "I’m arguing that there’s something about the values we teach our kids that affects how they eventually accumulate assets as adults."
Jewish families rank so highly because they tend to emphasize education, a strong predictor of wealth, and pursue higher-income jobs, she said.
A little more than a third of Jews in the survey made early high-risk, high-return investments, such as stocks and bonds, and placed little emphasis on early homeownership. Only 3 percent of conservative Protestants invested early.
Conservative Protestants’ reluctance to invest might relate to their emphasis on prayer and trust in God to meet their needs, Keister said.
Moreover, they don’t learn to invest from their families. And because they don’t emphasize education, they tend to end up with lower-paying jobs that provide less to invest, she said.
Jacobson, however, said most historians have regarded the Puritan ethic as the root of American materialism.
"These notions are not existent in Judaism as I understand it," he said.
Rich Nathan is a convert from Judaism who is pastor at Vineyard of Columbus, a large evangelical church on the North Side.
"Christian theology for the past three or four centuries has tended to divorce spirituality from real-world practice," Nathan said.
"Historically, the Puritans accumulated a great deal of wealth because their spirituality and their practice was integrated. Very few Christians today have a theology of work or a theology of education.
"Jewish theology and practice tends to be much more integrated."
Few houses of worship vilify wealth-building, but some encourage it more than others, Keister contends. Those that foster wealth often share investment tips and opportunities, she found.
Religious attitudes about family size and gender roles also matter.
Conservative Protestants tend to believe in literal interpretation of the Bible, which "can also lead to the conclusion that wealth accumulation should be avoided," she said.
Edward N. Wolff, professor of economics at New York University, has conducted extensive research on wealth-building.
He said Keister’s study "can provide new insights into the role of cultural background and economic achievement."
Wolff noted that the U.S. Census does not ask about religion, so data relating faith to financial assets are limited. Keister’s survey might justify further examination of links between religion and wealth, he said.
The study’s major omission, Wolff said, is that it does not speak to the high wealth accumulation among Asian-Americans.
Keister said she also omitted Islam and other religions for which little comparable data were available, but she plans to include them in future studies.
Lisa A. Keister can be reached at keister.7 @sociology.osu.edu.
Interesting.....
This link, which I cannot cut and paste as a picture, shows a graph of the wealth factor:
http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2003/09/25/20030925-C2-05.html