Deaths of Despair and the Decline in Religious Affiliation

"Deaths of Despair" is a common term for the increasing number of middle-aged white Americans who have been dying from suicide, conditions related to alcoholism, and drug overdoses (e.g., opioids). At the recent meeting for the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Culture (ASREC) in Boston, the economists Daniel Hungerman and Tony Giles of the University of Notre Dame, presented research that explores the relationship between the decline in religious affiliation and deaths of despair ("Opiates of the Masses? Deaths of Despair and the Decline of American Religion"). Like others, they trace the trend back to the early 1990s, thus dismissing the opioid abuse epidemic as a leading cause of the phenomenon, since the drugs central to that epidemic were unavailable 30 years ago. What they found is that the group that has experienced the largest increase in deaths of despair is the same group that has seen the largest decline in religious affiliation over the same time period: middle aged (45-54), non-Hispanic white Americans with no college education. While this group had the lowest levels of non-affiliation before the 1990s, today they have the highest.

Correlation, of course, does not necessarily mean causation, so Hungerman and Giles acknowledge they need to continue their research before it is ready for publication. Yet, they added that they "know of no other large coincidental changes of this kind.” Their initial findings also fit with J.D. Vance's observations in his book, Hillbilly Elegy, on the positive role that religion can play in peoples' lives. In it he laments the decline in church attendance rates among his "hillbilly" peers and notes that communities of faith offered something desperately needed for people like him, growing up in Appalachia:

For alcoholics, it gave them a community of support and a sense that they weren’t fighting addiction alone. For expectant mothers, it offered a free home with job training and parenting classes. When someone needed a job, church friends could either provide one or make introductions. When [my] Dad faced financial troubles, his church banded together and purchased a used car for the family. In the broken world I saw around me — and for the people struggling in that world — religion offered tangible assistance to keep the faithful on track. (pp. 93-94)

That there is positive relationship between religion and health and subjective well-being is well-established in the available research. It has been documented by thousands of studies (that is not a misprint), dating back to the 19th century, that have appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the British Medical Journal, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, the American Journal of Psychiatry, the American Journal of Epidemiology, and so on (for details, see Jeffrey S. Levine. 2016. "'For They Knew Not What It Was": Rethinking the Tacit Narrative History of Religion and Health Research." Journal of Religion and Health 56:28-46.) Thus, the findings of Hungerman and Giles should not come as a surprise. I suspect, though, that for many, especially those who have a mad-on with religion, they do. As I tell my students, however: just because you want something to be true, doesn't mean that it is.