Last week Mitt Romney, in a speech on religion, said that "Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom." Or, as I like to put it, "Religion iff Freedom." This bothered me more than a little bit, until I realized that I could turn it into an empirical question. Or a least a question where I could make a plot! Below is a plot of importance of religion in people's lives versus their political freedom for a 39 countries:
The views on religion were taken from a 2002 Pew survey and the political freedom index was taken from the 2007 Freedom House's survey of political freedom. I used political freedom which according to Freedom House measures the ability of "people to participate freely in the political process, including through the right to vote, compete for public office, and elect representatives who have a decisive impact on public policies and are accountable to the electorate."
Disclaimer: your mileage using this plot may vary, may get you into trouble in arguments, and may even result in you moving to Western Europe.
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What are the three countries that are outliers in the lower right (low religion, not free)?
Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Russia (the 6).
That's a pretty cool little graph! Thanks for making it.
Labels would be a nice addition to satisfy curiosity, but while we're asking, who are the most upper-left ones?
And, can you apply any tests/draw any lines through this to give us some kind of correlation? The best conclusion I can draw is that "in most countries that are not free, religion plays an important role."
At last answering the burning question: what do the nominally Communist nations Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Russia have in common?
Before this, the best answer was: carving their names in stone, with straight-line chisel-strokes, all have the letter V.
I'm guessing the upper left-most dot (1/84) is Ghana, the middle-left dot (1/59) is the US, and and the lower left quadrant is primarily Western European nations + Canada + Australia + NZ.
The graph seems to contradict Mitt's statement, in that there's a solid showing in the lower left quadrant of the graph. The question is--does this represent a steady-state situation or just a temporary anomaly? I'm guessing it's the latter.
If you want to make the graph even more informative, throw in birth rate (maybe using dot color). Nations with low birth rates are not going to be around all that much longer, at least not in their present form. The future belongs to those who show up for it.
This is an excellent visualization, though it does suffer a bit from granularity in the political axis. That said, I'm curious what the three dots off in the lower right correspond to.
I'm not at all surprised to see Russia in the lower right, but I'm wondering where China is on this plot?
Ugh. That will teach me to read the other comments first.
Very interesting. Thanks for the plot. ("The scientists are plotting against the world's religious.")
@Steve: China didn't allow Pew to ask about the importance off religion; thus I assume it isn't on the graph. They obviously didn't rank very well on freedom (a "6"). You won't find Egypt, Lebanon, or Jordan either b/c the question was deemed to "sensitive."
Here is the raw data. When I get time I'll put up a better labeled plot...
U.S.591
Canada301
U.K.331
Italy271
Germany211
France111
Poland361
Slovakia291
Bulgaria131
Czech 111
Korea251
Japan121
Ghana841
Brazil772
Peru692
Mexico572
Argentina392
Indonesia952
India922
Senegal972
Mali902
Sout Africa872
Ukraine353
Gutaemala803
Honduras723
Bolivia663
Philippines883
Kenya853
Venezuala614
Bangladesh884
Nigeria924
Tanzania834
Uganda855
Russia146
Pakistan916
Angola806
Turkey657
Uzbekistan357
Vietnam247
Cote d'Ivoire917
Wow, fascinating -- what intrigues me is that if you think of the ones and twos on the political freedom spectrum, there's a ton on both ends of the religiosity spectrum! I would have expected either a big cluster on the lower side, or a more-or-less uniform distribution a priori. But that's what data is for, I guess :)
In looking at the data the only correlation I think one may find here (especially in the freer nations) is that it may be consistent with the quality of education afforded the average citizen.
After I wrote the above about the correlation with education I thought I'd check it out a bit. If you look at the PISA (The Program for International Student Assessment) study just published a few weeks ago you might consider this for yourself. It can be downloaded at:
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/15/13/39725224.pdf
Incidentally the U.S. ranked 29th on the science scale
Just as a follow up on importance of religion vs. freedom vs. education. I took the Pisa data I mentioned as to how 15 year old students in each nation ranked with each other's science grading and added them to the data list. As you note the nations that don't even important enough to test consistently had the ranked religion more important. There also seems to be a looser correlation between religion and science scores.
NationRelFreeEdu
U.S. 59 130
Canada30 1 3
U.K. 33114
Italy 27 138
Germany 21 113
France 11 126
Poland 36 123
Slovakia29 131
Bulgaria13 143
Czech 11 115
Korea 25 111
Japan 12 1 6
Ghana 84 1N/T
Brazil 77 253
Peru 69 2N/T
Mexico 57 250
Argentina 39 252
Indonesia95 251
India 92 2N/T
Senegal 97 2N/T
Mali 90 2N/T
South Africa 87 2N/T
Ukraine 35 3N/T
Gutaemala 80 3N/T
Honduras 72 3N/T
Bolivia 66 3N/T
Philippines 88 3N/T
Kenya 85 3N/T
Venezuala 61 4N/T
Bangladesh 88 4N/T
Nigeria 92 4N/T
Tanzania83 4N/T
Uganda 85 5N/T
Russia 14 637
Pakistan91 6N/T
Angola 80 6N/T
Turkey 65 745
Uzbekistan 35 7N/T
Vietnam 24 7N/T
Cote d'Ivoire 91 7N/T