Individual’s religiosity enhances trust: Latin American evidence for the puzzle

This paper explores the effect of religious observance and affiliation to the dominant religion (Catholicism) on trust in institutions and towards others, and market attitudes. The analysis is performed using a Latin American
database of twenty thousand respondents from 2004 by means of ordered probit models. The most interesting results are:
i) Trust towards others is positively correlated with both religious observance and Catholic affiliation (and practise).
ii) There is a positive correlation between trust in the government, in the police, in the armed forces, in the judiciary and in the banking system and religious practise in general. Identical positive findings are obtained for Catholic affiliation and practise, although they may be affected by a majority effect.
Moreover, there is no evidence to support the hypotheses of a negative effect of religion on social capital.