Religion's Role in a Person's Net Worth

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Oct 14, 2003 | by Jennifer G. Hickey

Byline: Jennifer G. Hickey, INSIGHT

Religion's Role in a Person's Net Worth

A new study shows religious affiliation plays a significant role in wealth accumulation over the course of individual lives. Although educational and financial backgrounds contribute to the degree to which Americans amass savings, the study found religion also plays a fundamental role. The findings, published in the September issue of the academic journal Social Forces, relied on data compiled by the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and conducted by Ohio State University. Lisa Keister, the study's author, used data collected about 4,950 participants from 1985 to 1998.

The study found the median net worth of those practicing Judaism was $150,890 treble the median for the entire sample ($48,200). On the flip side, conservative Protestants amassed an average of $26,200 with mainline Protestants and Catholics in the middle.

"What I'm finding is that families have a powerful influence on how people learn to save, and religion is often an important part of family life," Keister said in a press release. "The things children are taught in Jewish homes are very different than those that are taught in conservative Protestant homes." She said the findings do not confirm stereotypes that Jews are overly concerned with making money.

Researchers found frequent religious attendance and family religious practice influence facets of a child's life likely to foster wealth generation, including academic attainment, spending patterns and social connections. Keister found that only 1 percent of Jewish people in the study remained asset poor throughout life, compared with 15 percent of conservative Protestants. About 9 percent of mainline Protestants and 7 percent of Catholics followed this trajectory.

GAO Finds Lapses In Verifying SSNs

To gain greater influence with Hispanic voters in his state, California Gov. Gray Davis recently signed a bill extending the privilege of holding a driver's license to illegal immigrants. Even if the California law is overturned, or the policy is not adopted in other states, the process of verifying Social Security numbers (SSNs) for driver'slicense applications needs to be improved, critics say. The General Accounting Office (GAO) was asked to examine the extent to which states use the services of the Social Security Administration (SSA) to verify SSNs and how that system could be improved.

In its September report, the GAO found the usual lapses: lack of proper measurement to assess the performance of the SSA system, an inadequate system to permit states to exchange driver'slicense information and an increased risk of fraud because the SSA does not match verification requests against its death files. The SSA did note its service is intended only to confirm an individual's SSN information, not to verify the data.

In addition, in 1999 the online request system experienced an average of three major outages per month and an average of five outages in 2000 as a result of capacity difficulties. And this was with only 25 states using the online or batch-request services. According to the GAO, in the last several years as many as 84 million requests have been made using the batch method, while 13 million requests have been processed online. Interestingly, the border states of New Mexico, Minnesota, Montana, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Michigan are among those that do not use the SSA verification service.

Poll of Iraqi Citizens Sparks Controversy

A recent poll of Iraqi citizens released Sept. 10 by Zogby International has initiated a dispute over polling methodology. A Sept. 11 letter written to Zogby by the Polling Review Board of the National Council on Public Polls took issue with the methods used by pollster John Zogby in conducting this survey.

The board complained about Zogby's characterization of the poll as a "scientific" survey because, as Zogby readily disclosed, the interviews were conducted in only four cities (not including Baghdad) and were taken in public places. Rather than culling opinions from a wider survey group, the letter says, a "convenience sample" was employed.

Warren Mitofsky of Mitofsky International e-mailed a letter to Zogby raising the board's concerns about selection of the respondents. "There is nothing random in this selection, not of the areas where the poll was conducted or the selection of respondents. It conforms to no known norm of scientific polling," wrote Mitofsky, who urged Zogby to "correct the record" by deleting such claims from releases accompanying the poll results.

A day later, Zogby replied that he was "baffled" by the letter and "a brief statement based on funny feelings, conclusions with no details and no request for more information." He defended his methodology as random, stratified and "creative in the context of a near-impossible situation on the ground."

The board said in an e-mail release on Sept. 15, "A scientific poll would have given every adult in Iraq a known chance of selection so that the chance, or probability, of selection for every adult in the country also could be calculated by the researcher. A convenience sample gives no chance of selection to most of the population." In addition to Mitofsky, the other members of the polling review board are Harry O'Neill, chairman of Roper Starch Worldwide, and Humphrey Taylor of Harris Interactive. A Gallup poll of Baghdadis found two-thirds think removing Saddam was worth the subsequent hardships.