Economics of Religion; An Indian Analysis

Being “Unity in Diversity” is the foundation, India is multi-ethnic and multi-cultural society including a variety of religions and cultures. Many of major world religions had their origin in India. There are a number of mind blowing and interesting facts about major religions of India, such as India has almost as many Muslims as Pakistan and it has more Christians than the population of Australia, more Buddhists than Tibet, more Sikhs, Jains, and Parsis than any country in the world. Remember that these figures are exclusive because India’s major religion is Hinduism which constitutes approximately 80% of population. Since Indian society is strictly bound to religion, it is interesting to think on economics behind it such as how people spend on their religion, or how much they contribute toward attaining the expected salvation. So the primary interest is to see and compare religious expenditure across different religions and social groups in India. Further, it is an attempt to identify the socio-economic determinants of religious expenditure and their effects on the size of religious expenditure using censored regression method.