A new research study indicates that church—going increases economic well—being — by almost exactly the amount necessary to support tithing!

Attending religious services may enrich the soul, but it also fattens the wallet, according to research released on Tuesday.

"Doubling the frequency of attendance leads to a 9.1 percent increase in household income, or a rise of 5.5 percent as a fraction of the poverty scale," Jonathan Gruber of the economics department at Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote in his study.

"Those with more faith may be less 'stressed out' about daily problems that impede success in the labor market and the marriage market, and therefore are more successful," Gruber wrote in the study, which was released by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Living in a community with complementary ethnic groups that share the same religion increases the frequency of going to a house of worship, he said in the paper titled "Religious Market Structure, Religious Participation, and Outcomes: Is Religion Good for You?"

Such visits correlate to higher levels of education and income, lower levels of welfare receipt and disability, higher levels of marriage and lower levels of divorce, the study said.

Gruber says he focused on non—Hispanic whites.

Ed Lasky   10 26 05