The wages of battling sin are getting better for men and women of the cloth.
Non-Catholic clergy have experienced significant increases in income even as their work weeks declined by more than 15 percent in recent decades, according to a major new study of clergy compensation.
Overall, in inflation-adjusted wages, non-Catholic clergy made $4.37 more per hour in 2013 than they did in 1983. That figure is more than double the wage increase of the average worker with a college degree.
Like most everyone else in this age of increasing economic inequality, clergy are continuing to fall financially behind other elite professions such as doctors, lawyers and hedge fund managers, the study found.
But the price of their calling is declining along with the wage gap that separates them from other college-educated Americans, according to the study following Current Population Survey data from 1976 to 2013.
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