Individual's Religiosity Enhances Trust: Latin American Evidence for the Puzzle

This paper explores the effect of religious observance and affiliation to the dominant religion (Catholicism) on trust in institutions and toward others, and market attitudes. The analysis is performed using a Latin American database of 20,000 respondents from 2004 by means of ordered probit models. The most interesting results are:

• (i) 

  Trust toward others is positively correlated with both religious observance and Catholic affiliation (and practice ).
• (ii) 

  There is a positive correlation between trust in the government, in the police, in the armed forces, in the judiciary and in the banking system and religious practice in general. Identical positive findings are obtained for Catholic affiliation and practice , although they may be affected by a majority effect.

Moreover, there is no evidence to support the hypotheses of a negative effect of religion on social capital.