Does Welfare Create Secularism?

Recently, we've been talking about God. In a similar vein, I direct you to this interesting study. It posits a strong link between increased public welfare spending and decreased religiosity. Here's the hypothesis, verbatim:

...we assert that cross-national variation in religious participation is a function of government welfare spending and provide a theory that links macro-sociological outcomes with individual rationality... as goverments assume many of those welfare functions, individuals with elastic preferences for spiritual goods will reduce their level of participation since the desired welfare goods can be obtained from secular sources.

Read it and let me know what you think.