Do Americans Believe in the Afterlife? A Machine Learning Approach

Belief in the afterlife has held profound significance for humanity since time immemorial, influencing how individuals contemplate mortality, meaning, and legacy. The current study aimed to identify key factors that predict belief in the afterlife and to examine whether there is a connection between religious identification and such belief. The analysis was based on data from the General Social Survey, spanning 2006 to 2022. A Random Forest model was employed, incorporating multiple imputations and Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique for sampling. Here we show that the key variables associated with belief in the afterlife are the respondent's age, frequency of prayer, and confidence in the existence of God. Notably, the results suggest that belief in the afterlife is more strongly associated with general religiosity than with affiliation to any specific religious tradition. While belief in the afterlife varies across individuals and cultures, it remains crucial for understanding how people cope with mortality and how death and the prospect of an afterlife are perceived within societal contexts.