Latter-day Saint Life

Does Faith Make You Happier? New Research Explores Links Between Religion and Well-Being

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Are you trying to be happier and healthier in 2019? Attending church could be a step in the right direction, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis.

Actively religious adults, or people who affiliate with a faith group and attend religious services at least once a month, are more likely to be involved in their community and say they're very happy than those who are religiously inactive or unaffiliated, Pew reported, drawing on data from three cross-national surveys.

"More than one-third of actively religious U.S. adults (36 percent) describe themselves as very happy, compared with just a quarter of both inactive and unaffiliated Americans," researchers noted. Among the more than two dozen countries surveyed, "there is no country in which the data show that actives are significantly less happy than others."

Story by Kelsey Dallas, Deseret News. Lead image by Kristin Murphy, Deseret News.

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