Religious/Spiritual Connection and Subjective Wellbeing Around the World: A Cross-Sectional Analysis with Nationally Representative Samples from 121 Countries

In response to concerns that have been raised about the Western-centricity of scholarship on wellbeing, the Global Wellbeing Initiative was established to strengthen the inclusiveness of large-scale wellbeing-related research by constructing survey items that are more sensitive to non-Western ideas, norms, and values. Drawing on a measure of religious/spiritual connection that was developed by the Global Wellbeing Initiative and fielded in the 2021 Gallup World Poll, we used nationally representative cross-sectional data from 121 countries (N = 125,843) to describe the distribution of people’s experienced religious/spiritual connection and examine its associations with subjective wellbeing globally, regionally, and by country. While a majority of individuals globally reported “often/always” feeling connected to a religion or form of spirituality, the distribution varied to some extent based on geographic location (both regionally and by country). Adjusting for a range of relevant covariates, there was a small positive association between religious/spiritual connection and subjective wellbeing globally. This finding replicated in many (but not all) regions and countries. Our findings help to enrich the existing body of global research on the role of religion/spirituality in subjective wellbeing, and provide a foundation for future large-scale research (e.g., Global Flourishing Study) that will be able to leverage this newly developed measure of religious/spiritual connection longitudinally.