But that's not really what this second chart says. Rather, as Gellman puts it "overall we see a positive correlation between income and religiosity in poor states and a negative correlation in rich states." Basically, if you live in a poor state, then the richer you are the more likely you are to go to church, whereas if you live in a rich state it's the reverse. I wonder to what extent that finding might just reflect a U-shaped distribution of church attendance with people in the middle more likely to be observant than those at either extreme. I also wonder how this would look if we used educational attainment instead of income.
This article available online at:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2007/11/religion-and-income/46869/
