There is a strong negative correlation between GDP per inhabitant and the importance of religion. In other words, in rich countries, people place less importance on religion. A naive interpretation of this data would conclude that religion holds back economic development. But more in-depth econometric research is more charitable. It suggests only that there is no strong link between economic growth and religious belief. Nevertheless, before we draw any hasty conclusions, we need to remember that what we see at any given time is a static vision of dynamic phenomena, the reasons for which may be distant and not as we imagined.
This is an excerpt from an article on our research website, ThinkForward. Read the whole article here.