Evidence-based dialogue: the relationship between religion and poverty through the lens of randomized controlled trials

Abstract

Rather than speculating about the relationship between poverty and religion or making use of anecdotal knowledge, it seems to be a more transparent way to make use of empirical evidence and the empirically obtained insights into the relationship between religion and poverty. Of particular interest is the role of religious institutions and religious beliefs in poverty reduction efforts. One systematic way to explore empirical findings is the use of a specific database, namely the database of the Abdul Jameel Poverty Action Lab—this is the premier institution for empirical and policy-oriented poverty research, committed to the “gold standard” of recent poverty research, Randomized Controlled Trials (RCTs). The database of the Jameel PAL rendered 14 studies (with a total of 18 research papers). Some of them were not sufficiently relevant for the topic; as such, in this study 11 of these studies are considered and the key findings of them are reconstructed insofar as they relate to the link between religion and poverty. This will be my first step. In a second step this paper offers some comments based on these studies and look at the relationship between religion and poverty more broadly; finally, some conclusions for poverty alleviation are presented.