This paper identifies a new source of differences in religiosity: the type of future tense marking in language. We argue that the rewards and punishments that incentivise religious behaviour are more effective for speakers of languages without inflectional future tense. Consistent with this prediction, we show that speakers of languages without inflectional future tense are more likely to be religious and to take up the short-term costs associated with religiosity. What is likely to drive this behaviour, according to our results, is the relatively greater appeal of the religious rewards to these individuals. Our analysis is based on within-country regressions comparing individuals with identical observable characteristics who speak a different language.

本文确定了宗教差异的新来源：语言中将来时标记的类型。我们认为，激励宗教行为的奖励和惩罚对讲语言的人来说更有效，而不会影响将来的时态。与此预测一致，我们表明，不加修饰语态的未来时态的语言使用者更倾向于宗教信仰，并承担与宗教信仰相关的短期成本。根据我们的结果，可能导致这种行为的是宗教奖励对这些人的更大吸引力。我们的分析基于国家内部回归，比较具有相同可观察特征且使用不同语言的个体。