A study by a Michigan professor finds that church involvement helps low-income youth make progress in school

Christian Century, Oct 17, 2001

A study by a Michigan professor finds that church involvement helps low-income youth make progress in school. "Churches in poor and crime-ridden neighborhoods are often the primary functional communities in an otherwise dysfunctional world," wrote Mark Regnerus, director of the Social Research Center at Calvin College in Grand Rapids.

Regnerus based his findings on an analysis of 9,700 responses to the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The importance of church attendance and religious faith was not much different among youth from a range of neighborhoods. However, he said, "As the level of poverty rises within the neighborhood, the relationship between church attendance and being on-track in school becomes more positive, indicating a uniquely protective influence of church attendance among youth in more impoverished neighborhoods when compared with their devout counterparts in more prosperous neighborhoods." A grant from the Pew Charitable Trusts funded the study.