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Belief Is Cheap: Efforts by the religious to segregate themselves from other groups are discussed in Laurence Iannaccone, “Introduction to the Economics of Religion,” Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 36, September 1998, pp. 1465-1496. The description of the emergence of ultra-Orthodox Judaism in Europe is drawn from Eli Berman, “Sect Subsidy and Sacrifice: An Economist’s View of Ultra-Orthodox Jews,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, Vol. 115, No. 3, August 2000, pp. 905-953. Membership in the Catholic Church is found in Carol Glatz, “Vatican: Priest Numbers Show Steady, Moderate Increase,” Catholic News Service, March 2, 2009. Time magazine’s famous God article is “Toward a Hidden God,” Time, April 8, 1966. The discussion on the weakening of the Catholic Church since the 1960s is drawn from the Association of Religion Data Archives (www.thearda.com/Denoms/D_836.asp, accessed 07/18/2010); the Pew Global Attitudes Project, “The U.S. Stands Alone in Its Embrace of Religion,” December 19, 2002; and the World Values Survey (www.wvsevsdb.com/wvs/WVSAnalizeSample.jsp, accessed 07/18/2010). Pope Benedict’s reintroduction of plenary indulgences is described in Paul Vitello, “For Catholics, Heaven Moves a Step Closer,” New York Times, February 10, 2009.

192-195 What the Church Wants: The medieval Catholic Church’s tinkering with its rules, penalties, and prices is described in Robert Ekelund Jr., Robert Hébert, and Robert Tollison, “An Economic Analysis of the Protestant Reformation,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 110, No. 3, 2002; and Robert Ekelund, Robert Tollison, Gary Anderson, Robert Hébert, and Audrey Davidson, Sacred Trust: The Medieval Church as an Economic Firm (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 96-98.

195-198 Sin vs. the Secular World: The decline of the belief in God across the industrial world is documented in Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004). The divergence from this trend in the United States is discussed in Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, “U.S. Stands Alone in Its Embrace of Religion,” Pew Global Attitudes Project, December 19, 2002; Roger Finke and Rodney Stark, “The Dynamics of Religious Economies,” in Michele Dillon, ed., Handbook of the Sociology of Religion (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and Association of Religion Data Archives (www.thearda.com/quickstats/qsdir.asp, accessed 08/19/2010).

198-200 Will God Bounce Back?: The relation between poverty and religion is discussed in Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris, op. cit.; and Eli Berman, op. cit. Data on fertility, poverty, and religious fervor in the United States is drawn from Census Bureau, Fertility of American Women 2006 (www.census.gov/prod/2008pubs/p20-558.pdf, accessed 08/19/2010); Census Bureau, State Median Family Income 2007 (www.census.gov/hhes/www/income/statemedfaminc.html. , accessed 08/19/2010); and Frank Newport, “Religious Identity: States Differ Widely,” Gallup Report, August 7, 2009 (www.gallup.com/poll/122075/religious-identity-states-differ-widely.aspx, accessed 07/19/2010).

201-205 The Price of the Future: The description of the Reverend Thomas Malthus is drawn from Robert Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers, revised 7th edition (New York: Touchstone, 1999), pp. 75-104. Malthus’s quote is in Thomas Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population: or, A View of Its Past and Present Effects on Human Happiness (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 42-43. Carlyle’s quote is in Thomas Carlyle, Chartism (New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1847), p. 383. The description of the collapse of ancient civilizations draws from Jared Diamond, “The Last Americans: Environmental Collapse and the End of Civilization,” Harper’s, June 2003; and James Brander and M. Scott Taylor, “The Simple Economics of Easter Island: A Ricardo-Malthus Model of Renewable Resource Use,” American Economic Review, Vol. 88, No. 1, March 1998, pp. 119-138. The description of the world