Religious belief really does seem to draw the sting of poverty

“RELIGION IS THE sigh of the oppressed creature…it is the opium of the people.” So wrote Karl Marx in 1844. The idea—not unique to Marx—was that by promising rewards in the next life, religion helps bear their lot in this one.A paper published in the by Jana Berkessel of the University of Mannheim, in Germany, and her colleagues takes a statistical look at the claim. Ms Berkessel's curiosity was piqued by a counter-intuitive finding in development economics. Researchers know that low socioeconomic status correlates with . The assumption was once that, as places became richer, this effect would weaken. Being poor in a rich country was presumed better than being poor in a .