Ethics, Income and Religion

• Published in: Journal of business ethics Vol. 61; no. 3; pp. 199 - 214
• Main Authors: Lam, Kit-Chun, Hung, Bill W. S.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer 01-10-2005; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Atheism; Buddhism; Buddhist ethics; Business ethics; Causality; China; Christian ethics; Christianity; Christians; Consumption; Correlation analysis; Cultural differences; Culture; Earnings; Economics; Income; Income estimates; Jewish ethics; Moral and religious aspects; Participation; Protestant ethics; Religion; Secular ethics; Social aspects; Social ethics; Spirituality; Studies; Taoist ethics; Tradition; Values; Wealth; Wealth, Ethics of; China; China, People's Rep
• ISSN: 0167-4544; 1573-0697
• DOI: 10.1007/s10551-005-0275-4

This paper investigates the relationship between ethics and income among individuals of different religions in the HKSAR of China. The presence of both traditional Chinese religion and Christianity from the West makes our study particularly interesting. The content of ethical beliefs varies with religion and thus the effect of ethics on income may also vary across religion. Furthermore, a reverse causal relationship may run from income to ethics. Since culture and taste affect the consumption behavior of a person, depending on the religion of the person, a person with a higher income may or may not like to 'acquire' more ethics. Our empirical results find that there is indeed a simultaneous relationship between income and being ethical so that a single equation estimation of income on ethics and vice versa generates biased estimates. Using a two-stage instrumental variable estimation, our study finds that being ethical contributes to higher income for Christians and the non-religious group, but lowers it for people of traditional Chinese religion. On the other hand, an increase in income increases the likelihood of a person's being ethical for both Christians and the people of traditional Chinese religion, but reduces it for the non-religious group.