Socioeconomic Differentials Among Religious Groups in the United States

The availability of hitherto withheld tabulations from the 1957 Current Population Survey, in which a question on religion was asked, provides a unique opportunity to examine a nationwide sample of the U.S. population for the relation between religion and socioeconomic status, as measured by education, occupation, and income. Over-all, without controls, the data show significant differences among the religious groups with respect to socioeconomic status. Judged by median income, median education, and the proportion of white-collar workers, Jews occupied considerably higher status position than did either Protestants or Catholics. Controlling for place of residence by restricting the analysis to the urban population and controlling for education as well examining the occupation data, and for occupation and education separately in controlling for the income data, suggest that, when these controls are introduced, there is a considerable narrowing of the differentials in socioeconomic status among the three religious groups. In fact, for several subcategories of each of the groups, the income differentials virtually disappear, as do some of the striking differentials in occupational composition. These controls suggest that many of the differences among the three religious gruoups to which the crude data point are in fact a function of the differential educational achievement and/or occupational composition of the members of these groups, as well as a result of their differential concentration in urban and rural places. With these factors controlled, although admittedly in a somewhat crude fashion, the conclusion seems warranted that both education and occupation play a much more crucial role than does religion itself in influencing the income levels of members of the three religious groups.