Religion, standard of living and the quality of life

This paper attempts to analyze the impact of religiosity on the standard of living and the quality of life of Jews in Israel as well as on the efficiency with which they are able to transform resources (their standard of living) into quality of life. The data sources are a time-budget survey conducted around 1992 in Israel. The methodology is based on the use of the concept of distance function that has appeared in the literature on duality in production and consumption and has been widely applied in efficiency analysis. The statistical procedure is based on both the so-ealled corrected ordinary least squares method (COLS) and on the stochastic production frontier analysis (FRONTIER). The results of this empirical investigation indicate that whereas the gender has no effect on the standard of living or the quality of life, the standard of living increases with education and age, is higher among individuals who are single and lower among the most recent immigrants (those who came after 1971 from Europe or America) as well as among the very religious (theharedi). The quality of life is found to be higher among single, more educated individuals and lower among the most recent immigrants. But it is also higher among religious (those who define themselves as being religious or very religious) than among the non religious people. It appears therefore that the very religious (the "haredim") are more efficient in transforming resources (their standard of living) into quality of life.