Influencing Factors on Religious Expenditures in Urban and Rural Regions Iran: Barro's Approach

Investigating the behavior of religious households is among important subjects in Islamic countries. As there are religious expenditures in consumption basket, recognizing factors affecting those expenditure is significantly important. By using income-expenditure data, and probit method, this paper is analyzing the case of Iran, in urban and rural regions for 2014. The variables include payment to charity funds, age, literacy level, household dimensions, employment, marriage situation, and home ownership. The results show that there is a positive and significant relationship between the above variables and the religious payments. The household dimension, however, does indicate a negative impact on religious payments. The literacy in rural area and employment in urban area do have much more impact relatively. Finally this research is an implicit testing of Barro’s hypothesis (negative relationship between religious behavior at one hand and prosperity and literacy on the other).