Good has a rather unwieldy graph showing religion by income. No surprises, with Jews first and Hindus second in percent with six figure incomes, and Jehovah’s Witnesses and black Protestant churches last. It would be interesting to know whether there are still affluence distinctions mainline white Protestants, such as Episcopalian v. Methodist.
On a national level, there are. Pew’s Religious Landscape Survey has detailed tables on educations, income, etc., broken down by denomination. Here’s a table I created (I left out historically black denominations). The values are percentages in each category, though the last column is a ratio:
| Denomination | < $30 K | $30 – $49 K | $50 – $74 K | $75 – $99 K | $100 K + | Post-grad | Liberal | ($100 K income)/(Post-grad) |
| Episcopal | 16 | 19 | 11 | 18 | 35 | 27 | 26 | 1.3 |
| Presbyterian Church USA | 16 | 19 | 19 | 18 | 28 | 24 | 16 | 1.17 |
| United Methodist | 23 | 21 | 19 | 16 | 22 | 14 | 14 | 1.57 |
| Disciplines of Christ | 31 | 14 | 21 | 14 | 20 | 17 | 12 | 1.18 |
| Presbyterian Church in America (Evangelical) | 34 | 20 | 16 | 12 | 18 | 13 | 14 | 1.38 |
| United Church of Christ | 27 | 20 | 21 | 14 | 18 | 21 | 21 | 0.86 |
| Evangelical Lutheran | 24 | 24 | 21 | 15 | 17 | 11 | 15 | 1.55 |
| Lutheran, Missouri Synod (Evangelical) | 24 | 20 | 20 | 18 | 17 | 9 | 12 | 1.89 |
| Southern Baptist | 30 | 25 | 19 | 11 | 15 | 7 | 10 | 2.14 |
| Church of Christ | 37 | 24 | 17 | 11 | 11 | 6 | 12 | 1.83 |
| Independent Baptist | 37 | 25 | 17 | 11 | 11 | 5 | 9 | 2.2 |
| Seventh-Day Adventist | 46 | 26 | 10 | 7 | 11 | 5 | 16 | 2.2 |
| American Baptist | 46 | 22 | 16 | 9 | 8 | 5 | 16 | 1.6 |
| Assemblies of God | 41 | 26 | 15 | 11 | 8 | 4 | 6 | 2 |
| Total Population | 31 | 22 | 17 | 13 | 18 | 11 | 20 | 1.64 |
I ordered by % with more than $100,000 per year income, except for the total American population, which is at the bottom. The relationship between education and income is pretty strong on a denominational level:
I was curious if there was a relationship between liberalism and being relatively poor in relation to educational attainment. The United Church of Christ stands out here. So here’s a plot:
This probably needs to be looked at in more detail, this was just a “quick & dirty.” Though it is striking to me how the 19th century truism of a social rank order of Episcopal > Presbyterian > Methodist > Baptists, seems to obtain in the early 21st century. Sensitivity to initial conditions.
