Religious diversity and regional development in China

- Identify possible impacts of religious diversity on regional development at province level under the same political regime
- Apply fragmentation and polarization indices as measures of religious diversity
- Solve the endogeneity issue with the fixed-effect two-stage regression

This paper investigates possible impacts of religious diversity on regional development in China. We developed the religious fragmentation and polarization indices as measurements for the religious diversity by using the religious site data from the 2004 economic Census data in China. The results from the panel data regressions within national coverage suggest that the religious diversity has positive and significant impacts on regional development in general. The results from the panel data regressions within regional coverage also suggest that religious fragmentation has a positive and significant association with the economic development in the eastern region of China while religious polarization has a positive and significant association with the economic development in the central and western regions of China.