God & welfare

Why should government welfare mean less religion?:

This was a question that Anthony Gill and Erik Lundsgaarde tackled by in 2004. They analysed the data from a range of countries, and found that the greater proportion of GDP that was spent on government welfare, the more non-religious people there were and the lower church attendance was. This held true even after statistically adjusting for other factors, like per-capita GDP, urbanization, government regulation of religion, and religious pluralism.

The standard explanation for this relation is that religion & government provide competing services, welfare. As government expands it presumably “crowds out” civil society welfare services, of which religious institutions are generally the most prominent. The author of the blog post above is generally skeptical of this model. I personally think it’s plausible, but the “rational choice” framework which it emerges from has generally been found wanting in many circumstances (e.g., general failure to explain religious dynamics in Eastern Europe after the fall of Communism). So more exploration of the topic is needed.
But I was wondering, how about checking to see if there’s a relationship between religion & welfare in the United States? I found per capital welfare spending by state, percentage with “No Religion” from The American Religious Identification Survey, and queried how important religion was and what percentage were atheists from the Pew Religious Landscape Survey. I didn’t adjust welfare spending for background variables (cost of living, age structure, etc.), but I thought it would be instructive as a “quick & dirty” exploratory exercise. Charts below.

I didn’t put any trendlines because there really weren’t any trends. Perhaps cost of living has to be taken into account and such. But I think it is important to note that quite a few high welfare states are actually not very secular, especially in the Midwest and Northeast, while several very low welfare states in the West are very secular. New Hampshire and Vermont are basically the same religiously, but their welfare spending profiles differ, with liberal Vermont being among the top spenders and moderate New Hampshire being in the middle of the pack. If 1 = the lowest per capita spending on welfare, New Hampshire is 1.56 and Vermont is 2.51. Maine, which seems marginally a bit more religious than these two states actually spends more per capita on welfare than Vermont.
Raw Data:

State	% No Religion	% Atheist	% Who Say Religion “Very Important”	Per Capita Welfare Spending
Nevada	20	6	50	718
Colorado	21	8	44	738
Texas	11	2	67	866
Georgia	12	2	68	907
Montana	17	4	47	911
Utah	17	3	66	924
Virginia	12	5	59	951
South Dakota	8	5	56	957
Michigan	16	5	54	980
Arizona	17	6	51	983
Florida	12	6	57	992
Idaho	19	5	58	999
Indiana	16	3	60	1023
Missouri	15	3	59	1027
Kansas	15	4	61	1030
Illinois	15	4	53	1048
Oregon	21	9	46	1048
Washington	25	7	48	1048
Louisiana	9	2	73	1064
South Carolina	7	3	70	1105
North Carolina	10	2	69	1111
New Hampshire	17	9	36	1119
Alabama	6	1	74	1120
Nebraska	9	1	61	1132
Oklahoma	14	2	69	1137
Wyoming	20	4	47	1137
North Dakota	3	5	56	1146
Maryland	14	6	56	1159
Iowa	13	6	51	1184
Arkansas	13	2	74	1225
California	19	7	48	1225
Tennessee	9	2	72	1257
Mississipi	7	1	82	1289
West Virginia	13	3	60	1291
Wisconsin	14	4	47	1296
Connecticut	12	9	44	1323
Kentucky	13	1	67	1351
New Jersey	15	6	52	1426
Ohio	15	4	55	1450
Delaware	17	5	55	1455
New Mexico	18	5	53	1466
Pennsylvania	12	4	54	1628
Minnesota	14	3	52	1776
Massachusetts	13	8	44	1779
Vermont	22	9	36	1799
Maine	16	8	42	1889
Rhode Island	15	6	44	2014
New York	13	7	46	2236