The Wages of Religion
Joshua D. Pitts, Kaustav Misra, Thomas Henry

Abstract
This research attempts to quantify the impact of religious affiliation on an individual’s hourly wage rate. In addition to estimating a wage equation as a function of religious affiliation for our entire sample of observations from the 2006 wave of the 1979 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we also decompose our sample to analyze the effects of religious affiliation on wages by race, sex, and region. Contrary to the majority of previous literature, we are unable to conclude that Jews receive a wage premium over members of other religious groups or those with no religious beliefs. However, we find ample evidence of a Catholic wage premium. Furthermore, we find the wage premium for Catholics to be largest in the Northeast U.S. Our results also show that Protestants do not receive a statistically different hourly wage rate from non-religious individuals.

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