Another Map Dorkery (and Religiosity) Post

The other day, I randomly heard about the US ranking of the "least and most religious states." I was curious, and looked it up; there was a Pew study along these lines released last week. No big surprises there: classic Southern Bible Belt states were the most religious (Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Tennessee), and New England making up most of the least-religious. Interestingly, though, Alaska is #2 of the least religious. Colorado is in the top 10 least--interesting, in that I always thought that it was one of those "split" states. I did a bit more web searching, and found that Gallup did a similar poll early this year, except presented in map form:


It's a bit more useful to look at it this way. Us heathen Northeasterners stand out, as does the Pacific Northwest. Utah, of course, is "Most Religious"--makes sense, given the Mormons. California is a notch away from the least religious category--perhaps the immigrant population, but more importantly (I think) is the fact that inland/rural California is a completely different political animal from coastal California. For instance, check out the red/blue mix from the 2008 election, by county.


The map is from the guy who does awesome cartograms, which demonstrate that even though "red America" is spatially large, the populations are roughly balanced. To wit, the same map above, turned into a cartogram:


But overall, yeah, I'm afraid that religiosity maps inversely to how much I would want to live in a state, as a rough trend.

This reminded me, though, of one of my posts from 2008, on religiosity vs. per capita income, and the way that the United States was a completely outlier from the general world trend (higher income / lower religiosity). I though it would be cool if somebody did this same type of study by state. Well, it turns out, some professors at Columbia have done exactly that! Schweet. 2007 data, but I'm guessing the trends have not changed that much.


States that voted for Bush in 2004 are in red and the Kerry-supporting states are blue. You can see that people in richer states tend to be less religious, although the relation is far from a straight line. There is also some regional variation (more religious attendance in the south, less in the northeast and west).

Pretty much the trend that we were all expecting. Okay, one more geeky map that I found, and then off to bed for me. I don't know how familiar most people are with the term "tax burden"--it is an indication (again, by state) of how much money is paid in Federal taxes, vs. received/disbursed. the Tax Foundation did a study back in 2006; the map is pretty self-explanatory. In case you can't read the key, the dark blue states are the ones who are receiving more tax money than they pay in, and the light blue ones are the ones who are receiving less Federal money.


Interesting that some of the reddest states are the ones who are taking in the most Federal money. Reminds me of the wag I have heard some say about Alaska's attitude towards the Feds: "You can't tell us what to do! Now give us our money!" Yeah.