{"id":866395,"date":"2026-03-19T05:00:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T10:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/?p=866395"},"modified":"2026-03-18T11:04:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-18T16:04:52","slug":"the-data-says-it-clearly-religious-people-are-happier-than-non-religious-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/the-data-says-it-clearly-religious-people-are-happier-than-non-religious-people\/","title":{"rendered":"The Data Says It Clearly: Religious People Are Happier Than Non-Religious People"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-preview\"><p>Sometimes it helps to state the plain truth found in the data: religious people are happier than non-religious people. This is especially true for religious traditions that are more &#8220;high intensity&#8221; than those that take a more casual approach to religious belief and church attendance.<\/p> <p>The reason I can say this is because the Pew Research Center recently released data from their 2023-2024 Religious Landscape Study, which surveyed about 37,000 adult Americans. The key question was fairly straightforward: &#8220;Generally, how happy are you with your life these days?&#8221; Three response options were provided: not too happy, pretty happy, and very happy.<\/p> <p>It&#8217;s always useful to start with a simple overview of how people responded to that happiness question.<\/p> <p><\/p> <p>In the full sample, 28% of people reported being very happy, and 57% selected the middle option \u2014 &#8220;pretty happy.&#8221; Only a small portion of individuals are miserable: 15%. Breaking it<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block-login login-toggle\">Already a member? <a href=\"#\">Log in<\/a><\/div>\n\t\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block-content\">\n\t\t\t\t<h2>Unlock premium content!<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t<p>Get access to all Church Answers premium content from our expert contributors plus many other membership benefits.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<h3>$9.97 per month<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t<p>Unlimited access<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/join\/\" class=\"button\">Join Now<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-preview\"><p>Sometimes it helps to state the plain truth found in the data: religious people are happier than non-religious people. This is especially true for religious traditions that are more &#8220;high intensity&#8221; than those that take a more casual approach to religious belief and church attendance.<\/p> <p>The reason I can say this is because the Pew Research Center recently released data from their 2023-2024 Religious Landscape Study, which surveyed about 37,000 adult Americans. The key question was fairly straightforward: &#8220;Generally, how happy are you with your life these days?&#8221; Three response options were provided: not too happy, pretty happy, and very happy.<\/p> <p>It&#8217;s always useful to start with a simple overview of how people responded to that happiness question.<\/p> <p><\/p> <p>In the full sample, 28% of people reported being very happy, and 57% selected the middle option \u2014 &#8220;pretty happy.&#8221; Only a small portion of individuals are miserable: 15%. Breaking it<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block\">\n\t\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block-login login-toggle\">Already a member? <a href=\"#\">Log in<\/a><\/div>\n\t\t\t<div class=\"content-restriction-block-content\">\n\t\t\t\t<h2>Unlock premium content!<\/h2>\n\t\t\t\t<p>Get access to all Church Answers premium content from our expert contributors plus many other membership benefits.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<h3>$9.97 per month<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t<p>Unlimited access<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<a href=\"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/join\/\" class=\"button\">Join Now<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t","protected":false},"author":17635,"featured_media":866399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"publish_to_discourse":"0","publish_post_category":"1","wpdc_auto_publish_overridden":"","wpdc_topic_tags":"","wpdc_pin_topic":"","wpdc_pin_until":"","discourse_post_id":"","discourse_permalink":"","wpdc_publishing_response":"","wpdc_publishing_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1,183,184,179,175,186,177,178,191,14796,180,194,18058,176,187,185],"tags":[19513,21969,21970,21968,21967],"class_list":["post-866395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-church-answers","category-communications","category-discipleship","category-first-impressions","category-grow","category-health-and-metrics","category-lead","category-membership-and-assimilation","category-mind-body-and-spirit","category-monday-wednesday-featured","category-outreach-and-evangelism","category-preaching","category-premium","category-revitalize","category-smaller-churches-and-communities","category-worship","tag-church-attendance","tag-happiness","tag-non-religious-people","tag-religious-people","tag-the-data-says-it-clearly-religious-people-are-happier-than-non-religious-people","membership-content","access-restricted"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Data Says It Clearly: Religious People Are Happier Than Non-Religious People | Church Answers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Sometimes it helps to state the plain truth found in the data: religious people are happier than non-religious people. This is especially true for religious traditions that are more &quot;high intensity&quot; than those that take a more casual approach to religious belief and church attendance. The reason I can say this is because the Pew Research Center recently released data from their 2023-2024 Religious Landscape Study, which surveyed about 37,000 adult Americans. The key question was fairly straightforward: &quot;Generally, how happy are you with your life these days?&quot; Three response options were provided: not too happy, pretty happy, and very happy. It&#039;s always useful to start with a simple overview of how people responded to that happiness question.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/churchanswers.com\/blog\/the-data-says-it-clearly-religious-people-are-happier-than-non-religious-people\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Data Says It Clearly: Religious People Are Happier Than Non-Religious People | Church Answers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sometimes it helps to state the plain truth found in the data: religious people are happier than non-religious people. This is especially true for religious traditions that are more &quot;high intensity&quot; than those that take a more casual approach to religious belief and church attendance. The reason I can say this is because the Pew Research Center recently released data from their 2023-2024 Religious Landscape Study, which surveyed about 37,000 adult Americans. The key question was fairly straightforward: &quot;Generally, how happy are you with your life these days?&quot; Three response options were provided: not too happy, pretty happy, and very happy. 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