Income Distribution of Religious Traditions
Last night I saw an NPR story called Religion Survey Finds Many Americans Swap Faiths. It had a link for Full results of the survey and tools for examining the findings, which I looked into and found some data about income distribution between different religions in America. After a little playing around in Excel, I came up with this:
I was surprised to see that over 40% of Hindus and Jews make $100,000+/yr! Mormons and Catholics sit in the middle of the distribution, around those unaffiliated and the national average. Actually, it seems like everyone does about the same (+/-12% from the national average), except the Hindus, Jews, and Orthodox which do significantly better (+59, +55%, & +22% respectively) and the Jehovah’s Witness and Black Protestant churches which do significantly worse (-24% & -31%).
Disclaimer: The second graph was obtained through arbitrary values selected for the ranges (“Less than $30,000” -> $15,000. “$30,000-$49,999” -> $40,000. “$50,000-$74,999” -> $60,000. “$75,000-$99,999” -> $90,000. And “$100,000+” -> $150,000) multiplied by the percentages from the first graph to obtain average salaries divided by the “National Average” average salary. So no, it’s not accurate numbers, just a trend.
I was surprised to see that over 40% of Hindus and Jews make $100,000+/yr! Mormons and Catholics sit in the middle of the distribution, around those unaffiliated and the national average. Actually, it seems like everyone does about the same (+/-12% from the national average), except the Hindus, Jews, and Orthodox which do significantly better (+59, +55%, & +22% respectively) and the Jehovah’s Witness and Black Protestant churches which do significantly worse (-24% & -31%).
Disclaimer: The second graph was obtained through arbitrary values selected for the ranges (“Less than $30,000” -> $15,000. “$30,000-$49,999” -> $40,000. “$50,000-$74,999” -> $60,000. “$75,000-$99,999” -> $90,000. And “$100,000+” -> $150,000) multiplied by the percentages from the first graph to obtain average salaries divided by the “National Average” average salary. So no, it’s not accurate numbers, just a trend.