A Data Puzzle: Why Are US Hispanics of Mexican Heritage Underrepresented in Mormonism?

New Data Cut of US Hispanic Heritage

Photo by Gabriel Tovar on Unsplash

Introduction

When we look at the heritage of US Hispanic Mormons, we see something interesting: members tracing their ancestry to Central and South America are overrepresented, while those from Mexico and Puerto Rico are surprisingly underrepresented.

Why is the Church’s success among US Hispanics not proportionally distributed across all heritage groups?

As I have been working through different waves of the US Cooperative Election Study, I noticed a question on Hispanic heritage. Specifically, “From which country or region do you trace your heritage or ancestry? (Check all that apply).” A version of this question is asked specifically to those who identify as Hispanic with several Hispanic countries. This question has been asked since 2015 and when we combine the data, we have a sample of 507 US Mormon Hispanics. This is what we’ll look at today!

Chart

So, let me point out a few things here…

• The most dominant group in the US sample is Mexican-heritage hispanics; however, in the Mormon sample it’s United States-heritage hispanics (+5). What could this mean? Perhaps it could point to intergenerational assimilation within the US, where children of immigrants identify as US Hispanic and are converting or raised LDS.

• Central(+7) & South American Hispanics(+5) are over-represented in the US Mormon population. Why is that? Perhaps this could be due to foreign missionary efforts, and an increased desire to for hispanics to migrate to the central hub of Mormonism.

• Why are Puerto Rican and Mexican under-represented in the US Mormon population according to our data?

You may think that the difference is due to Central and South American moving to the US from missionary efforts. But, if that was the case, shouldn't we expect to see LDS Hispanics identifying with US heritage be the lowest and all other groups be higher? Missionary efforts are in Mexico as well and if central and South Americans are motivated to move to the US, why wouldn't Mexicans? For Puerto Ricans it's, of course, different since they are already a part of the US just without statehood.

History is definitely not my strong suite, but perhaps there are historical reasons. From my research, Mormonism was introduced in Mexico some time before other parts of Latin America. Perhaps there are some strong historical reasons as different Latin American countries have gone through periods of instability and unrest at different times and perhaps motivated immigration. And depending on the motivation for their immigration perhaps they would be more or less open to a new religion?

Do you have any thoughts or hypotheses?

Perhaps in the coming weeks, I’ll explore questions around Hispanics and Mormons deeper.

See you next week!

Code available here. Variable harmonization doc available here.