The elusive economic blessings of tithing : Mormon temples and county poverty

This paper examines the relationship between Mormon temples and county-level poverty rates in the United States. The Mormon church teaches that obedience to the law of tithing, which requires members to donate 10% of their income, can break the cycle of poverty. Using the presence of a temple as a proxy for tithing participation, I test whether counties with temples exhibit lower poverty rates than comparable counties without temples. Employing several difference-in-differences models on county-level data from 2010-2018, this paper finds no statistically significant evidence that temples reduce poverty rates. The results suggest that the presence of a temple has no effect on county-level economic outcomes, contrary to Mormon doctrinal claims about the power of tithing to alleviate poverty. This finding is likely attributable to the way in which the church allocates tithing revenues, a highly centralized and hierarchical affair with no clear mechanism to reduce poverty in the communities from which funds are sourced.