The more religious you are the happier you are likely to be according to new research.

A study of the effect of religion on quality of life claims that religious people are happier the more often they go to church and pray.

The research, presented to the Royal Economic Society, gathered data from thousands across Europe including the UK and found that religious people have better “life satisfaction” than their non-religious counterparts.

But the author of the study, Professor Andrew Clark, admitted that other factors could be at work. He said benefits of a religious upbringing unrelated to belief such as a stable family home, could have influenced the outcome.

The report found that religious people suffer less psychologically if they become unemployed. But believers are lazier when it comes to looking for work when they are out of a job, say researchers Professor Clark and Dr Orsolya Lelkes.

Other traumas, such as divorce, have less of an impact on the state of mind of believers according to researchers, who say that religion acts as a type of “insurance” against personal disaster.

This is not the first study showing a positive correlation between religious belief and perceived quality of life, but this one began as an investigation into why there were different levels of unemployment benefits across Europe.

Professor Clark said: "We originally started the research to work out why some European countries had more generous unemployment benefits than others, but our analysis suggested that religious people suffered less psychological harm from unemployment than the non-religious.

"They had higher levels of life satisfaction".

Terry Sanderson, director of the National Secular Society, dismissed the findings. “Non-believers can’t just turn on a faith in order to be happy,” he said. “If you find religious claims incredible, then you won’t believe them, whatever the supposed rewards in terms of personal fulfilment.”