Hell good for economy

[shecky]

in countries where large percentages of the population believe in hell, there seem to be less corruption and a higher standard of living.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20040727/bs_nm/economy_hell_dc_1

http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/2004/c/pages/fear_of_hell.html

Interestingly, the article in the Regional Economist seems to have been amended. I wonder what it was originally like?

 

[evildave]

http://www.stlouisfed.org/publications/re/2004/c/pages/fear_of_hell.html

The chart about "Hell Belief" tends to look like pure, random noise to me. Especially looking at the graph, and the figures for population 'belief' and 'income'. It's all over the chart.

The chart about average personal income versus corruption tends to indicate where corruption is low, personal income is high. A far stronger correlation for the sample given. This is only common sense. The more corrupt the government, the worse off everyone is... except for those who 'own' the government.

 

[Lars Blitzer]

Could you find where the charts and the article are archived, perhaps mirrored on a sociology site? Forgive me, but I don't want to go by anecdotal evidence ....

 

[evildave]

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Re.../commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=65265

This appears to be where the charts came from.

Note the distinctive shotgun patterns with lines blissfully drawn through them showing a 'correlation' of the randomized samples. I say shotgun because this is literally what you would see if you fired a shotgun loaded with birdshot at a large piece of cardboard.

Some of their other 'research'.
http://www.heritage.org/research/features/issues2004/religion.cfm#FF