TY  - JOUR
AU  - Dehejia,Rajeev
AU  - DeLeire,Thomas
AU  - Luttmer,Erzo F.P.
TI  - Insuring Consumption and Happiness Through Religious Organizations
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 11576
PY  - 2005
Y2  - August 2005
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11576
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w11576.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Rajeev H. Dehejia
Wagner School of Public Policy
New York University
295 Lafayette Street, 2nd floor
New York, NY 10012
Tel: 212-998-7435
E-Mail: rajeev@dehejia.net

Thomas DeLeire
La Follette School of Public Affairs
University of Wisconsin-Madison
1225 Observatory Drive
Madison, WI 53706
Tel: 608-263-6998
Fax: 608/263-2820
E-Mail: deleire@wisc.edu

Erzo F.P. Luttmer
6106 Rockefeller Center, Room 305
Department of Economics
Dartmouth College
Hanover, NH 03755
Tel: 603/646-6479
E-Mail: Erzo.FP.Luttmer@Dartmouth.Edu
M2  - featured in NBER digest on 2005-08-22
AB  - This paper examines whether involvement with religious organizations insures an individual's stream of consumption and of happiness. Using data from the Consumer Expenditure Survey (CEX), we examine whether households who contribute to a religious organization are able to insure their consumption stream against income shocks and find strong insurance effects for whites. Using the National Survey of Families and Households (NSFH), we examine whether individuals who attend religious services are able to insure their stream of happiness against income shocks and find strong happiness insurance effects for blacks but smaller effects for whites. Overall, our results are consistent with the view that religion provides an alternative form of insurance for both whites and blacks though the mechanism by which religious organizations provide insurance to each of these groups appears to be different.
ER  -