Considerable evidence has documented that the elderly are more religious and that religiosity is associated with better health and lower mortality. Yet, little is known about the reverse role of life expectancy or proximity to death, as opposed to age, for religiosity. This paper provides evidence for the distinct role of expected remaining life years for the importance of religion in individuals’ lives. We combine individual survey response data for more than 300,000 individuals from 95 countries over the period 1994–2014 with information from period life tables. Contrary to wide‐held beliefs, religiosity decreases with greater expected proximity to death. The findings have important implications regarding the consequences of population aging for religiosity and associated outcomes.

中文翻译：

---

衰老，临近死亡和宗教信仰

大量证据表明，老年人宗教信仰较高，而宗教信仰与更好的健康状况和更低的死亡率相关。然而，人们对宗教信仰的预期寿命或接近死亡（而不是年龄）的相反作用知之甚少。本文提供了证据，证明了预期剩余寿命对宗教在个人生活中的重要性的独特作用。我们将1994-2014年间来自95个国家/地区的300,000多人的个人调查回复数据与期间寿命表的信息结合在一起。与普遍认为的相反，宗教信仰随着死亡的临近而降低。这些发现对人口老龄化对宗教信仰和相关结果的影响具有重要意义。