The Direct and Indirect Impact of Religion on Well-Being in Germany Gerd Gro ¨zinger • Wenzel Matiaske Accepted: 11 March 2013 / Published online: 5 April 2013 Ó Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013 Abstract A European Social Survey (ESS)—based study of Clark and Lelkes on the European level showed a double positive connection between religion and life-satisfaction: not only did a personal involvement have a positive impact, but there was also a regional externality. Even atheists seemed to be happier in areas with many religious people. However, the regional structure of the ESS can be seen as methodologically doubtful. We therefore replicated the study with more rich German data. In our study we confirm the positive individual effect of religion, but we did find a negative regional externality. However, further analysis revealed, this was an effect of an omitted variable: the degree of urbanization. In a more detailed approach we show that this effect is confined to areas with a protestant majority. We conclude that the positive degree of urbanization influence on life-satisfaction is presumably due to the chance for more political participation in the (protestant) city states in Germany. Keywords Life satisfaction Á Religion Á Regions Á Germany The relatedness of religion and life satisfaction is a well-known topic in the social sciences, with numerous research articles on it. Some years ago there was already a four-digit number of such literature (Koenig et al. 2001). And the majority of the findings showed a positive correlation (Myers 2008). But then it is also frequently pointed out that most empirical studies refer to the situation in the USA and that there might be a case of ‘‘American exceptionalism’’ (Tiryakian 1993; Jelen 2005). Among the affluent Western states—on which this debate focuses—the better part is considered as being secular to a large extent. The population of the Unites States, however, is seen as unusually religious, despite the formal strict separation of church and state (Norris and Inglehart 2004). G. Gro ¨zinger (&) Flensburg University, Auf dem Campus 1, 24943 Flensburg, Germany e-mail: groezing@uni-flensburg.de W. Matiaske Helmut-Schmidt-University, University of the Federal Armed Forces Hamburg, Holstenhofweg 85, 22043 Hamburg, Germany e-mail: matiaske@hsu-hh.de 123 Soc Indic Res (2014) 116:373–387 DOI 10.1007/s11205-013-0308-9