A new study conclusively shows multiple benefits of a faith-based life to working-class adolescents – particularly males.

As a child living in communist Russia, Ilana Horwitz knew nothing about religion. But after her family emigrated to the United States when she was seven years old, Horwitz attended a Jewish school and began teaching some Judaism to her parents. Years later, as a graduate student in sociology, education, and Jewish Studies at Stanford University, she chose to focus on religion as an academic interest.

Horwitz realized that many young mothers living in her university housing...