A Continuing Trend in Government Restrictions on Religion

Last month, the Pew Research Center released a report on changes in government restrictions on religion around the world. Read the summary here. If you are interested, then you can also check out the full report pdf, but be warned that it is pretty long.

The key finding is that the median level of government restrictions on religion increased slightly from 2020 to 2021. This development is a continuation of a trend that the Pew Research Center has been measuring since 2007 using their Government Restrictions Index (GRI).

In statistics, an index is a composite statistic. That is, it is a single number that summarizes information from several data sources.. Creating an index is no simple thing because it can be conceptually difficult to determine how best to combine different data into a single number, but indices are very important in the social sciences because of their ability to summarize many things at once. And this is true for the GRI. Because government restrictions can take many forms, the GRI provides a single number that summarizes all of those government restrictions in a useful way.

As you read this summary, you should look for information on the GRI, what it measures, and how it measures it. Also look for information about how government restrictions are related to other types of government interventions, such as the government's providing of benefits to religious groups.

Once you've read the summary page, then click on the link that takes you to Chapter 4 to learn about restrictions in the world's 25 most populous countries. Scroll down to see the graphic. Which large countries have the most restrictions? Which large countries have the fewest restrictions? Any surprises?