New research has found that children from religious households could be less generous than children from secular homes.

1,170 children aged between five and 12 years from six countries (Canada, China, Jordan, Turkey, USA, and South Africa) took part in the study.

Around 24% of households involved in the research identified as Christian, 43% as Muslim and 27.6% as not religious, with small amounts of participants from other religions and belief systems.

In the study - entitled The Negative Association between Religiousness and Children’s Altruism across the World, published in Current Biology by researchers from seven universities - the authors write that "we show that religiosity... is not associated with increased altruism in young children. Our findings robustly demonstrate that children from households identifying as either of the two major world religions (Christianity and Islam) were less altruistic than children from non-religious households.

"Moreover, the negative relation between religiousness and spirituality and altruism changes across age, with those children with longer experience of religion in the household exhibiting the greatest negative relations," they add.

The study also found that religious parents are more likely to believe that their children express "more empathy and sensitivity for justice in everyday life."

You can read the full report here.

Lead author Prof Jean Decety of the University of Chicago said “our findings contradict the common-sense and popular assumption that children from religious households are more altruistic and kind toward others. In our study, kids from atheist and non-religious families were, in fact, more generous".