Researchers analyzed data on religion and school results from 76 countries on all continents to investigated if there is a relationship between religiosity and performance in school.

This chart shows the relation between sex differences in religiosity and performance in science (top panels) and mathematics (bottom panels).

They found that the more religious the society is, the lower the performance was in school.

“The findings support the idea of a ‘displacement hypothesis’ that when children spent more of their time on religion, they will spend less time on other things.”

– Gijsbert Stoet, study author, and Professor of Psychology at Leeds Beckett University

It appears not to matter which religion you dedicate your time to, only how religious you are.

Stoet points out that science and mathematics are key elements to building modern societies. Therefore, a secular approach is important, which keeps religion within the private sphere.

“Science and mathematics education are key for modern societies. Our research suggests that education might benefit from a stronger secular approach.”

“Given the strong negative link between religiosity and educational performance, governments might be able to raise educational standards and so standards of living by keeping religion out of schools and out of educational policy-making,”

The study also confirms previous research showing that women are more religious than men, but this was not associated with school performance.

The five least religious countries of the 82 countries surveyed, were, the Czech Republic, Japan, Estonia, Sweden and Norway, and the five most religious, Qatar, Indonesia, Egypt, Yemen, and Jordan.

The study is based on data from PISA, TIMSS, the World Values Survey, the European Values Survey and the Human Development Report for 2000-2015.

The results have been published in the scientific journal Intelligence.

Countries by religousisy ranking

  1. Czech Republic 2.4287
  2. Japan 2.9006
  3. Estonia 3.5331
  4. Sweden 3.5460
  5. Norway 3.8893
  6. France 3.9153
  7. Australia 3.9772
  8. Latvia 4.0265
  9. New Zealand 4.1000
  10. Vietnam 4.1414
  11. Luxembourg 4.1451
  12. Hong Kong 4.1506
  13. Hungary 4.1513
  14. United Kingdom 4.1638
  15. Denmark 4.2019
  16. Germany 4.2114
  17. Spain 4.4118
  18. Russian Federation 4.5171
  19. Bulgaria 4.5208
  20. Uruguay 4.5341
  21. Netherlands 4.5381
  22. Slovenia 4.6142
  23. Israel 4.7425
  24. Belgium 4.7429
  25. Austria 4.9865
  26. Switzerland 5.1248
  27. Finland 5.2007
  28. Korea 5.2338
  29. Taiwan 5.2382
  30. Ukraine 5.2607
  31. Lithuania 5.3902
  32. Ireland 5.4193
  33. Kazakhstan 5.5005
  34. Portugal 5.5815
  35. Iceland 5.6637
  36. Canada 5.8881
  37. Slovak Republic 5.9166
  38. Montenegro 6.0029
  39. Croatia 6.1819
  40. Argentina 6.2355
  41. Italy 6.2660
  42. Serbia 6.3655
  43. Azerbaijan 6.4765
  44. Albania 6.4769
  45. Chile 6.6069
  46. Greece 6.6493
  47. Poland 6.6810
  48. Moldova 6.7013
  49. Singapore 6.8898
  50. Kyrgyzstan 6.8909
  51. United States 7.1149
  52. Cyprus 7.1378
  53. Macedonia 7.2942
  54. Bahrain 7.4265
  55. Lebanon 7.4931
  56. Romania 7.5672
  57. Peru 7.5846
  58. Brazil 7.8896
  59. Colombia 8.0000
  60. Armenia 8.0756
  61. Mexico 8.0979
  62. Thailand 8.1705
  63. Turkey 8.1882
  64. South Africa 8.3394
  65. Trinidad and Tobago 8.8732
  66. Puerto Rico (USA) 8.9150
  67. Iran, Islamic Rep. 9.0828
  68. Malaysia 9.2705
  69. Georgia 9.2756
  70. Philippines 9.4454
  71. Palestinian Nat?l Auth. 9.4510
  72. Saudi Arabia 9.5341
  73. Kuwait 9.5450
  74. Ghana 9.6143
  75. Algeria 9.6354
  76. Morocco 9.6697
  77. Tunisia 9.7808
  78. Jordan 9.7933
  79. Yemen 9.7956
  80. Egypt 9.8369
  81. Indonesia 9.8501
  82. Qatar 9.9553


Reference:
Gijsbert Stoeta, David C. Gearyb, Students in countries with higher levels of religiosity perform lower in science and mathematics http://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2017.03.001