I struggle with this question. On the one hand, you can find some good in the most miserable situations. For instance, a cancer survivor might tell you how the experience made them view each day as a gift and helped them cherish each and every day. Hell, even a prisoner can tell you they get three meals a day and clean water to drink. On the other hand, the religion makes you sacrifice in ways that are counterproductive materially and harmful to the soul.
In my personal experience, it's possible that growing up a JW was a net positive, but for reasons outside of my control. My mother was completely unequipped to raise a family. My father had no interest or was incapable of providing any kind of guidance. He wasn't a deadbeat. Although poor, we never went to bed hungry.
We grew up in a poor neighborhood and attended failing schools (the kind that have two or three armed police officers on permanent patrol). The average classmate is divorced, working a menial job and living day-to-day. A lot of my classmates have felony records and have spent time in prison. At least three classmates are in prison for murder. Gangs were rampant.
The religion gave my mother the justification to become a zealot about protecting us from "the world." I did not have friendships outside of school growing up. My mother was inactive, so we didn't have friends at the KH, either. My entire childhood consisted of going to school and coming home to watch television or play Ninetendo. My childhood and adolescence were robbed from me.
But by the time I turned 18, I didn't have any of the baggage that I might have acquired had my mother not been as militant as she was. I could very easily envision a scenario where I would have been an accomplice to a crime because I was hanging out with the wrong crowd or a situation where I got a girl pregnant in our teens. The last meeting I attended was when I was about 25 years old and I felt like I've been running 7 years behind ever since. My 25 was essentially 18 for most people. I've managed to do fine and am currently in a really nice spot in my mid/late 30s where JWism is mostly a distant memory I reminisce about here once or twice a week.
I'd love to take a peek at the parallel universe where my parents never became JWs and see how things would have played out. It's possible I'd be in a worse position now simply because my mother was not equipped to raise us properly and JWism at least made her skew to the overprotectionism side of things.
None of this means all is well in JW-land. As others who left much later in life have attested to, the longer you stayed in the cult the more severe the ramifications.
Edit: The better solution would have been having parents who could skillfully navigate the challenges of raising kids in near-poverty without the unnecessary burdens of JWism, but given the hand I was actually dealt, this might have been the best possible outcome for me.
