Belief in an Afterlife: A National Survey

Abstract

This article presents an exploratory analysis of factors affecting belief in an afterlife. Data are taken from the 1978 subfile on the National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey. With belief in life after death serving as the dependent variable, a number of variables are introduced in a tabular analysis. Among factors found to be statistically significant are sex, race, age, marital status, and several religious and residential variables. Controlling on frequency of church attendance and religious intensity, it is shown that Protestants have the highest incidence of belief in life after death, followed closely by Catholics, with Jews exhibiting the lowest level. A discriminant analysis was run in order to select a group of independent variables that were good predictors of belief in an afterlife. Race, religion, and church attendance were found to be significant discriminating variables of such belief.