I’m glad I found your Substack. This is just I was hoping for - the LDS Ryan Burge!
Interesting that the Active demographic looks a lot like the Disaffiliated demographic in education and income. It seems like the progression of dropping out is not Active - Less Active - Disaffiliated, but rather two tracks. The less educated/lower income go from Active to Less Active, while the more educated / higher income go from Active to Disaffiliated. Does that make sense?
Also interesting to see the political party and fertility trends among those three groups. Certainly seems like liberal politics and family status (which also correlates with liberal politics) correlate with dropping out.
Hi Stephen - really high praise! Thanks. I got the idea for this blog from Ryan Burge!
I like your insight about 2 tracks and I think you are right. The Less active group seems to have more "lower propensity" individuals. I am interested in looking at breaks in community involvement, voter turnout, etc among less actives in the future to confirm this.
And yes, there is a very large political divide in these groups. Its interesting to see so many disaffiliated Mormons leave religion entirely which is related to the political "god gap".
Glad you're here! For answers to your questions... Yes the total church membership is growing each year. The activity rate is a bit harder to pin down and likely varies greatly by region. One way to get at this is looking at the child of record birthrate. Active members are more likely to take their kid to be blessed. So if the ratio of births and members increases the activity could be as well. The problem with this is that the number of kids people choose to have affects this number as well. And it's kinda hard to disentangle the two. I write more about this and other overall church trends here, so check it out if you're interested: https://open.substack.com/pub/mormonmetrics/p/plotted-2024-conference-data-update?r=18bie1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
I’m glad I found your Substack. This is just I was hoping for - the LDS Ryan Burge!
Interesting that the Active demographic looks a lot like the Disaffiliated demographic in education and income. It seems like the progression of dropping out is not Active - Less Active - Disaffiliated, but rather two tracks. The less educated/lower income go from Active to Less Active, while the more educated / higher income go from Active to Disaffiliated. Does that make sense?
Also interesting to see the political party and fertility trends among those three groups. Certainly seems like liberal politics and family status (which also correlates with liberal politics) correlate with dropping out.
Great stuff.
Hi Stephen - really high praise! Thanks. I got the idea for this blog from Ryan Burge!
I like your insight about 2 tracks and I think you are right. The Less active group seems to have more "lower propensity" individuals. I am interested in looking at breaks in community involvement, voter turnout, etc among less actives in the future to confirm this.
And yes, there is a very large political divide in these groups. Its interesting to see so many disaffiliated Mormons leave religion entirely which is related to the political "god gap".
Sounds great! I will anxiously await your future posts!
Glad you're here! For answers to your questions... Yes the total church membership is growing each year. The activity rate is a bit harder to pin down and likely varies greatly by region. One way to get at this is looking at the child of record birthrate. Active members are more likely to take their kid to be blessed. So if the ratio of births and members increases the activity could be as well. The problem with this is that the number of kids people choose to have affects this number as well. And it's kinda hard to disentangle the two. I write more about this and other overall church trends here, so check it out if you're interested: https://open.substack.com/pub/mormonmetrics/p/plotted-2024-conference-data-update?r=18bie1&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false