LDS Membership Numbers

[clarkgoble]

7 minutes ago, strappinglad said:

I'm from Zion. We have the luck of being only 20 minutes from Lethbridge , a city of about 80,000 , and so we can be a bedroom community and the homes are cheaper than the city.

So what counts as Zion? Please don't say Raymond.  LOL.

Edited June 21, 2018 by clarkgoble

[hope_for_things]

2 hours ago, clarkgoble said:

Tithing revenue isn't helpful I think. That said I do think the Church has reasonably good markers that stand in for activity based upon how many people are at Church. You have "froth" due to people who are sick, on vacation or visiting an other ward for blessings or so forth. However over time that tends to even out I suspect. You can also do some degree of sanity checking by looking at temple recommend holders or tithe payers. The former is more useful in these days when there are so many temples. (Back when I was young and temples were frequently 12 hours away many people didn't bother keeping a recommend)

You make some really good points, thanks for the comments.  Personally I think tithing revenue would be extremely helpful and interesting, but I’m a finance guy and that’s my wheelhouse.  

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, mrmarklin said:

We were just talking at lunch today about the bursting of the bubble.  But with the general national economy doing well, the bubble seems a long way off.

There is a lot of money still coming into the area.  Building is booming.  I was in SFO this morning, and there is new construction everywhere making a serious mess out of an already bad traffic situation.

Silicon Valley has created more wealth concentrated in one area since anything ever in the history of the world.  A lot of billionaires live here.  Everything is more expensive, and I believe that San Francisco is the most expensive city in the world by some measures.  A BMW is the Silicon Valley version of the Chevy from days past.  Not noteworthy at all to own one.

The economy was doing excellent last time around as well.  For me, the most important indicator is the income to cost of housing ratio.  If that gets too far out of alignment, things will come back to down. 

Another problem with just looking at the employment and growth rates is all of that is interconnected with real estate.  I’m not saying a crash like before is coming, but I think we need to keep a close eye on things.  It’s only a matter of time before a market correction, hopefully a less severe one than last time.  

[FearlessFixxer]

10 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

I sure do wish the church would report its active membership numbers. 

They sort of accidentally did in the Deseret News about 3 years ago.  The worldwide number is 36%

if you Google: Mormon Church accidentally publishes activity rate you can read about it.

[jkwilliams]

5 minutes ago, FearlessFixxer said:

They sort of accidentally did in the Deseret News about 3 years ago.  The worldwide number is 36%

if you Google: Mormon Church accidentally publishes activity rate you can read about it.

That sounds about right. 

[Duncan]

In Canada we have roughly 195k ish? members or about as many people in England who believe the Jedi is a real thing

[hope_for_things]

9 minutes ago, FearlessFixxer said:

They sort of accidentally did in the Deseret News about 3 years ago.  The worldwide number is 36%

if you Google: Mormon Church accidentally publishes activity rate you can read about it.

Thanks, I remember that.  Wish it wasn’t just averaged over the whole world.  But yes, that was a surprising admission at the time and confirmed a lot of estimates people were making.  

How many of that 36% pay tithing would be another interesting piece of data.  I’d guess only 50%, but I really have no idea.  

[clarkgoble]

8 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

The economy was doing excellent last time around as well.  For me, the most important indicator is the income to cost of housing ratio.  If that gets too far out of alignment, things will come back to down. 

Another problem with just looking at the employment and growth rates is all of that is interconnected with real estate.  I’m not saying a crash like before is coming, but I think we need to keep a close eye on things.  It’s only a matter of time before a market correction, hopefully a less severe one than last time.  

Yeah, I'm not convinced there's a bubble since the real issue is zoning laws and housing supply. When you constrict a market that much it's anything but a bubble. The bigger issue is the huge inequality this leads to in California. Absolute income numbers hide poverty when so much money goes to living expenses. Further the type of businesses that hire middle class are leaving. That tends to leave the high tech sector and the service sector. The medical part of the service sector is again split between nurses/doctors/administrators and then lower level staff. While nurses and doctors do alright and tend to have their pay adjusted upward, the less technical staff again has the issue of cost of living versus income.

Ideally California, particularly the Bay Area, would ease up on zoning restrictions. But I just can't see that happening.

31 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

You make some really good points, thanks for the comments.  Personally I think tithing revenue would be extremely helpful and interesting, but I’m a finance guy and that’s my wheelhouse.  

I think it'd be interesting but I just can't see how it'd tell us about inactivity due to some people paying a lot and some paying little. Particularly outside of Utah with its small geographic wards you end up with a big spread of income. Even within wards where boundaries are a few blocks you sometimes get a pretty surprising big spread. (My ward is like that partially due to having some low end apartments mixed in with large family houses)

[clarkgoble]

10 minutes ago, Duncan said:

In Canada we have roughly 195k ish? members or about as many people in England who believe the Jedi is a real thing

196.5K from the latest stats. That's official numbers. I'd imagine real numbers are about half that. Of those a full 81K are in Alberta. Only just under 5K back home in Nova Scotia, although that's a ton more than when I was a kid.

Sadly the last equivalent to what Pew or ARIS do for Canada was in 2011. So religion statistics are fairly out of date. I tried to go through the census data but it appears we're in "Other Christian" and aren't broken out by Stats Canada.

24 minutes ago, FearlessFixxer said:

They sort of accidentally did in the Deseret News about 3 years ago.  The worldwide number is 36%

if you Google: Mormon Church accidentally publishes activity rate you can read about it.

For the world that's actually surprisingly high.

[Duncan]

12 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

196.5K from the latest stats. That's official numbers. I'd imagine real numbers are about half that. Of those a full 81K are in Alberta. Only just under 5K back home in Nova Scotia, although that's a ton more than when I was a kid.

Sadly the last equivalent to what Pew or ARIS do for Canada was in 2011. So religion statistics are fairly out of date. I tried to go through the census data but it appears we're in "Other Christian" and aren't broken out by Stats Canada.

For the world that's actually surprisingly high.

yeah, I think there are more members outside of Alberta but Alberta has the largest chunk of them. It's odd and rare to run into another member of the Church when you are out and about!

[ksfisher]

1 hour ago, Thinking said:

My younger brother, who lives in the midwest, was asked to resign. He told them that even though he didn't believe anymore, he wasn't going to resign because he didn't want to cause any hurt feelings with our parents.

I’ve never heard of anyone being asked to resign.  Strange.

[jkwilliams]

Just now, ksfisher said:

I’ve never heard of anyone being asked to resign.  Strange.

I haven’t, either, but I have seen enough weird stuff that this doesn’t surprise me. 

[Thinking]

33 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

I’ve never heard of anyone being asked to resign.  Strange.

Yep.

[jkwilliams]

Just now, Thinking said:

Yep.

Reminds me of a bishop who encouraged a woman to divorce her husband because he didn’t have a temple recommend. Strange, indeed. 

[Calm]

14 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Reminds me of a bishop who encouraged a woman to divorce her husband because he didn’t have a temple recommend. Strange, indeed. 

And completely against church teachings and policies.

[jkwilliams]

Just now, Calm said:

And completely against church teachings and policies.

I know. It still happened. Broke up a marriage with two kids. 

[strappinglad]

One of the disadvantages of a lay ministry... occasionally it shows up lame.

[Robert F. Smith]

4 hours ago, Thinking said:

I didn't use a random number generator or anything like that, but I selected 20 areas from different parts of the world.

The selections must be random to be meaningful.

Quote

 

Quote

16 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

.....................  The decreases in some cases are too small to be statistically significant.

If the same decrease (or increase) happens 9 years in a row, it is significant.

Not if you are looking at a much longer period, in which case the numbers are likelier just stable, not indicating any actual increase or decrease.  Statistical significance has to be calculated seriously.

Quote

I wish I had the time to be that comprehensive.

It is enough that you are tracking the numbers the way you do.  What would be an improvement is to extend them over a longer period, and to take in a more scientific sample.  Right now, you have too narrow a slice of time, and hit and miss selections.

Edited June 21, 2018 by Robert F. Smith

[carbon dioxide]

13 hours ago, Walden said:

You think that "out-migration" from California is unprecendented now, wait until Gavin Newsom becomes governor in November, the man who was at the absolute forefront of gay marriage and legalized marijuana while he was mayor of San Francisco. I have a feeling you may get many more Mormon neighbors in Utah who have migrated from California in the next 4 years.

When they get those water rules implemented, those people who don't want to have constant BO due to lack of showers will be leaving California in large numbers.

[carbon dioxide]

11 hours ago, mrmarklin said:

 

Despite high housing costs, there is still incredible demand.  Someone is buying housing! 

A lot of Chinese are buying houses

[carbon dioxide]

5 hours ago, mrmarklin said:

We were just talking at lunch today about the bursting of the bubble.  But with the general national economy doing well, the bubble seems a long way off.

There is a lot of money still coming into the area.  Building is booming.  I was in SFO this morning, and there is new construction everywhere making a serious mess out of an already bad traffic situation.

Silicon Valley has created more wealth concentrated in one area since anything ever in the history of the world.  A lot of billionaires live here.  Everything is more expensive, and I believe that San Francisco is the most expensive city in the world by some measures.  A BMW is the Silicon Valley version of the Chevy from days past.  Not noteworthy at all to own one.

Prices will dip when the Hayward fault goes.

[mrmarklin]

1 hour ago, carbon dioxide said:

Prices will dip when the Hayward fault goes.

Maybe. It’s worthy to note that during the last real estate bust, prices in SFO and the San Mateo peninsula leveled off, but did NOT go down. Unlike the rest of the country.  Across the bay only fifteen miles away, prices adjusted downward around 20%. But many areas of the nation crashed by 50% or more. 

[Thinking]

44 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

The selections must be random to be meaningful.

The selections must be random to claim that the results are a good estimate of the population. We have the population data, so there is no need to do an SRS. I thought it would be interesting to look at selected areas.

44 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Not if you are looking at a much longer period, in which case the numbers are likelier just stable, not indicating any actual increase or decrease.  Statistical significance has to be calculated seriously.

Using the overall church numbers for M/C, there was an increase each year.

5  7  9  7  7  3  2  3  4

Since there are no outliers and the distribution is not strongly skewed, I will answer your implied question.

Was this increase statistically significant?

The mean of the sample is 5.22 and the standard deviation is 2.39.     Note: the square root of 9 is 3.

Using a null of zero, t = (5.22 - 0)/(2.39/3) = 6.55.     The p-value for t = 6.55 is 0.00009

That's significant.

44 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

It is enough that you are tracking the numbers the way you do.  What would be an improvement is to extend them over a longer period, and to take in a more scientific sample.  Right now, you have too narrow a slice of time, and hit and miss selections.

I started when I started. The Church doesn't make the retroactive numbers available. Time only goes as fast as it goes. Next year I'll have 11 years of data (10 years of difference data). Since 2008 the total church membership increased by 19.32% while the number of congregations increased by 8.53%. It's reasonable to speculate that if activity rates stayed consistent, the percent increase in the number of congregations would be approximately the same as the percent increase in the number of members.

Note: I'm not revealing anything that LDS leaders don't already know. They have math people working for them. In fact they have more numbers available to those math people than they allow to be published.

 

[Calm]

9 minutes ago, mrmarklin said:

Maybe. It’s worthy to note that during the last real estate bust, prices in SFO and the San Mateo peninsula leveled off, but did NOT go down. Unlike the rest of the country.  Across the bay only fifteen miles away, prices adjusted downward around 20%. But many areas of the nation crashed by 50% or more. 

If only my parents had been able to hold on to their Redwood City house another 30 years (Mom is still around, they could have rented it out).  Bought it for 55,000 in 1972.  Sold it for around 300,000 mid 80s, sold for more than twice that much in 90.  Just checked and it is worth 2.6 million.

Edited June 21, 2018 by Calm

[jkwilliams]

8 hours ago, Calm said:

If only my parents had been able to hold on to their Redwood City house another 30 years (Mom is still around, they could have rented it out).  Bought it for 55,000 in 1972.  Sold it for around 300,000 mid 80s, sold for more than twice that much in 90.  Just checked and it is worth 2.6 million.

My parents bought their 2700-square-foot tract home in Calabasas for $51,000 in 1971. Its value peaked at about $1.3 million just before the housing collapse, and it bottomed out at $755,000 in 2011. It's back up to just over $1.3 million (just checked Zillow). It's been paid for since 2001, so they are just paying property taxes (restricted by Prop. 13) and insurance. Every so often they say they are thinking about selling it and moving out of the LA area, but they probably won't because they really do love where they live. I don't know how people can afford to live there, but apparently they can.