World Religion, Politics and Human Development

Abstract

The relationship between religion and politics continues to be an important theme in political philosophy. In many developing countries, religion has a huge impact on human development. The public domain data of UNDP and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) were analyzed to describe linkages between religion and the human development index (HDI) across 182 nations. The secondary data on religious majority in each country and HDI ranks for year 2018 were compiled and analyzed. Descriptive statistics was used to present the results. The analysis found that religion and human development were closely interconnected. The majority of the population was Christian. All Christian-majority countries were placed in medium to very high human development rankings. Buddhist-majority countries had high to very high human development. The Jewish majority population living in Israel was also had very high human development. While most of the low human development countries had the Islamic majority population.