I found this NY Times graphic to be quite interesting. While what is plotted here is, supposedly, religion versus income; the way I read it is you can almost draw a straight line between education (along the horizontal) and income (along the vertical.) So what this may mean is that the religious cultures that encourage education AND also business help their adherents do well. Of course, there is also the propensity for adherents to choose lower paying and more rewarding careers – such as education.
Income and Religion
Let’s pick on “our” denomination – Unitarian Universalist. According to the graph (click here to enlarge), 50% of our congregants have a college degree yet only about 40% of our households have income greater than $75K per year. Hindus on the other hand, have about 75% college degrees and about 65% over $75K income. If you look at the “top four” religions and think about their cultural attitude toward business endeavors as well as their obvious support of education, the dots become quite well connected.
The $75K annual income is not arbitrary. Other studies have shown that below that number people are not “happy” and anything much above that number returns very little marginal increase in “happiness.”