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Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Extract of Mormon statistics from the Pew Research Center Survey on America's Changing Religious Landscape



Today (May 12, 2015) the Pew Research Center released a demographic survey of America’s changing religious landscape examining demographic changes for US religious groups from 2007 to 2014.   I am providing a link to the survey results published by Pew here.   

All I have done was just to pull out of the survey all of the statistics that are directly relevant to Mormonism.  If you wish to see how Mormonism demographic statistics compare to other religions you should follow the link to the PEW survey and look at the tables they have published.

The demographic results specific to Mormonism are below:

GENERAL STATS

·         Mormon Share of US Population from 2007 to 2014 from  1.7% to 1.6% Decline of 0.1%
·         36% of people raised Mormon no longer consider themselves Mormon.   Of those, 21% of them are now unaffiliated with any religion, 6% are now evangelical, 3% protestant, 2% Catholic,  1% moved to historically black protestant, 3% are now “other”
·         69% of US Mormons were born in the Church, 31% are converts.

AGE BREAKDOWN
·         Average Median age of Mormons increased from 41 to 43
·         US Mormons aged 18 to 29 declined from 24% to 22%
·         US Mormons aged 30 to 49 declined from 42% to 40%
·         US Mormons aged 50 to 64 increased from 19% to 22%
·         US Mormons aged 65 and over increased from 15% to 16%

ETHNICITY
·         Ethnicity: Whites decreased from 86%  to 85% of US Mormons
·         Ethnicity: Hispanics increased from 7% to 8% of US Mormons
·         Ethnicity: Blacks decreased from 3% to 1% of US Mormons
·         Ethnicity: Asian experienced no change, still 1% of US Mormons
·         Ethnicity:  “Others” increased from 3% to 5% of US Mormons
·         2% of Whites in the US are Mormon (unchanged from 2007)
·         1% of Hispanics in the US are Mormon (Unchanged from 2007)
·         1% of ethnicity “Other” are Mormon (unchanged from 2007)
·         A negligible % of Blacks in the US are Mormon (unchanged from 2007)

IMMIGRATION
·         85% of US Mormons are third generation immigrants with both parents having been born in the US
·         7% of US Mormons were born in the US, but had at least one parent born outside the US
·         7% of US Mormons were born outside the US

EDUCATION
·         The percentage of Mormons with at least a bachelor’s degree increased from 29% to 33%
·         27% of Mormons have at most a high school degree.
·         40% of Mormons have gone to some college but not graduated
·         23% of Mormons have a Bachelor’s degree
·         10% of Mormons have a post graduate degree

INCOME
·         26% of Mormons make less than $30K
·         21% of US Mormons make between $30 to $49K
·         38% of US Mormons make between $50K to $99K
·         16% of US Mormons make more than $100K

GENDER
·         The percentage of US Mormons that are men increased from 44 to 46%
·         The percentage of US Mormons that are women decreased from 56% to 54%

MARRIAGE
·         82% of Married Mormons have a Mormon as a spouse.  This is the second highest rate among all religious groups.  
·         The percentage of US Mormons that are married dropped from 71% to 66%.  Yet, the Mormon faith has the largest percentage of adults that are married compared to every other religious group studied by the Pew Survey
·         The percentage of US Mormons that have never been married increased from 12% to 19%
·         The percentage of US Mormons that are divorced/separated dropped from 9% to 7%.  This is the second lowest rate out of all of the religious groups studied in the Pew survey.  Only the Hindus have a lower rate
·         The percentage of Mormons who are living with a partner has remain unchanged at 3%
·         The percentage of US Mormons who are widowed has remain unchanged at 5%
·         The fertility rate among Mormons is officially the highest compared to all other religious groups in the US at an average of 3.4 children born to adults between the ages of 40-59.  
·         The average number of children at home is also the highest compared to all other religious groups at 1.1

MIGRATION

·         The percentage of Mormons living in the West has declined from 76 to 67%
·         The percentage of Mormons living in the South has increased from 12% to 20%
·         The percentage of Mormons living in the Midwest has stayed the same at 7%
·         The percentage of Mormons living in the Northeast has increased from 4% to 6%


RELIGIOUS COMPOSITION BY GENERATION
·         1% of those from the greatest generation (born before 1928) are LDS
·         2% of those from the silent generation (1928 to 1945) are LDS
·         1 % of those who are Baby Boomers (1945 to 1964) are LDS
·         2% of those who are Generation X (1965 to 1980) are LDS
·         2% of those who are Millenials (1981 to 1996) are LDS
·         All these numbers have remain unchanged from 2007 to 2014

SEXUAL ORIENTATION
·         1% of self reported gays, lesbians or bisexuals in the US consider themselves Mormon

METHODOLOGY

·         A sample size of 664 Mormons was used with a margine of error of +/-  4.9 percentage points

18 comments:

  1. "36% of people raised Mormon no longer consider themselves Mormon."

    That's insane, so high...

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    Replies
    1. This is an important fact to consider when you see that membership as a % of the population has drop from 1.7-1.6%. People leaving the church has surpassed both the conversion rate (~280,000/year) and the highest birth rate of any religion COMBINED.

      With a soon-to-be faltering birth rate, conversions expected to have a negative rate of growth in the next few years, and rapidly increasing deconversions, this may be the last year that LDS membership remains flat (within the MoE), and will soon plummet.

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    3. "People leaving the church has surpassed both the conversion rate (~280,000/year) and the highest birth rate of any religion COMBINED."

      How so?

      According to the statistical reports for 2013 and 2014 presented in April, 2014's and 2015's general conference:

      15,372,337 LDS, 2014
      15,082,028 LDS, 2013
      ---------------
      00,290,309 Net LDS increase, 2013-2014

      How could people leaving the Church surpass both conversions and birth rate if the net *increase* is nearly 300k?
      What's the source for your statement?

      296,803 Converts baptized
      116,409 New children of record
      -----------
      413,212 Total additions to membership, 2014

      413,212 Total additions to membership, 2014
      -290,309 Net LDS increase, 2013-2014
      ---------------------------------------------------------
      122,903 Losses from deaths and names removed from records.

      122,903 Losses
      /15,082,028 Total LDS, 2013
      -----------------
      0.8% Loss from deaths and names removed from records

      And, how much of that 0.8% would be from deaths?
      Doesn't leave much for apostacy.

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    4. Dale: The LDS church's self-reported data have been notoriously imprecise. They were busted for cooking the data in a new way to look better in the last Glenmary/ASARB religious census. Also in some foreign censuses where the populations drastically under-reported LDS self-identity than what the org claimed existed there.

      That's why self-identity-based research like the US Census and sample-driven studies like Pew and ARIS are so vital.

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  2. That's a small sample size to give an accurate account, is it not?

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    Replies
    1. It's a pretty decent sample size given the size of the Mormon population. Sample sizes of 1100 are routinely used in election polling, and margin of error decreases at a non-linear rate

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    2. That's not a bad sample size. Would be nice to have 1000 so that the "rule-of-thumb" of ~3% MOE could be achieved. The risk is that some bias is introduced through non-proportionality -- they have disclosed there is an over-weight of responses coming form the "Mormon corridor" region. As such Pew have done other LDS research besides merely the Religious Landscape Study. For my past work with the data I always included multiple sources, which jibe reasonably well, just to give additional perspective on their noted trends.

      Most of them which quite significantly clash with what the LDS church self-reports.

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  3. According to their methodology appendix, "the margin of error for results based on the full sample is +/- 0.6 percentage points."

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    Replies
    1. Indeed their full sample on the whole US "religious landscape" Pew's is an excellent study. E.g., An overall trend like showing that Americans are quite religiously mobile --among all self-identities including the non-religiously affiliated-- is statistically justified. But drawing significant understanding beside broad qual-quant trends in small religious populations like the Mormons is prone to higher margins of error.

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  4. How can the general authorities keep preaching that "All is well in Zion?" Can anyone be really satisfied with these numbers? Evan the church's own numbers reported in GC show the growth flat and starting to decline from year to year. "Hastening the work" ? I'm confused.

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  5. How can the general authorities keep preaching that "All is well in Zion?" Can anyone be really satisfied with these numbers? Evan the church's own numbers reported in GC show the growth flat and starting to decline from year to year. "Hastening the work" ? I'm confused.

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    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    2. Bob, I'm puzzled: Bob, please cite where and when the general authorities preached that "All is well in Zion." I sense urgent calls to hasten the work, not to be comfortable with our current status.

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  6. Ethnicity: Blacks decreased from 3% to 1% of US Mormons
    Ethnicity: “Others” increased from 3% to 5% of US Mormons


    I'll bet these two figures are correlated. It may well be that many Mormons who would have categorized themselves as black in 2007 would now choose something like "multiracial." I think that's a trend in the larger American culture, but I wonder if it's amplified within the Mormon subculture?

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  7. Where does the Pew data show that "36% of people raised Mormon no longer consider themselves Mormon"? I didn't see that data point when I looked through the Pew report.

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  9. A reality check about the reported decrease in BLDS share from 3% to 1%:

    Total LDS in the US at the end of 2007 was about 5.9 million
    (I didn't save 2007's total but 2006's was 5,779k and 2008's was 5,974k, averaging 5,877k).

    Total LDS in the US at the end of 2014 was 6,466k (a).

    So, these numbers combine to yield BLDS in the US:

    2007: 176k (b)
    2014: 65k (c)
    -----------------
    Loss: 111k -- Purported decrease of BLDS in the US.

    Do we believe that the total number of BLDS in the US fell by nearly 2/3 in the last 7 years? (d)

    The Pew Forum says that the LDS's sample size of 656 for racial detail (e) has an approximate margin of error +/- about 5% (f). Maybe we should consider the 1% BLDS reported as a "soft" number, not to be used with certainty.

    - - - - -
    The "Mormon" section of this study is found at:
    http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/mormon/

    (a) http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/facts-and-statistics/country/united-states

    (b) 5,877k total US LDS * 3% BLDS = 176k BLDS in US in 2007

    (c) 6,466k total US LDS * 1% BLDS = 65k BLDS in US in 2014

    (d) 111k Loss / 176k 2007's BLDS = would be a 63% decrease in US BLDS from 2007 to 20014

    (e) http://www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/religious-tradition/mormon/
    656 sample size for racial % is given at the lower left corner of the chart entitled, "Racial and Ethnic Composition among Mormons --
    % of Mormons who identify as…"

    (f) http://www.pewforum.org/about-the-religious-landscape-study/
    The section headed "Data Details" says a sample of 500 has an approximate margin of error of +/- 5.5 percentage points; a sample of 750's is +/- 4.5.

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