A few years ago I wrote a post questioning the now-common soundbite that a majority of Church members in the US are single. I cobbled together a variety of sources showing that, for people who self-identify as Latter-day Saints, that’s not the case, and I now suspect that the “majority single” position comes from looking at the Church’s raw records, which, as anybody who has systematically gone through a non-Utah ward list can tell you, is primarily populated by people who were baptized earlier in life but now have virtually nothing to do with the Church.
I went ahead and updated this analysis with numbers from the Cooperative Election Survey, and basically found the same thing: the majority of Church members in the US are indeed married.(At the outset it is worth noting that here I am only considering the US Church; I don’t have any data to make any kind of judgment on the demographics of the international Church).
However, we have an interesting new wrinkle, the trend is clearly in the direction of most members not fitting the archetype of the married member. Specifically, while in the late 2000s about 70% of Church members were married, that number dropped a little over 10 percentage points over the next 15 years. In 2023 54% of members in the CES were married; however that was with a sample size of 259 members, 2022 with 62% married had a sample size of 706, so given the larger sample size I’m inclined to think the true rate is somewhere in the high 50s.
What else does the data show? First, self-identified members in domestic partnerships, while negligible in the late 2000s (below 1%), are becoming more apparent, but obviously their numbers are still low (about 2-3% in recent years).
Second, it appears that the decline in marrieds is coming at least in large part from the increase in never-marrieds, although it’s hard to know about the time trend for divorced and widowed for sure because the sample sizes are so tiny at that point and their proportions jump around.
So to summarize: yes, the soundbite is still wrong; most self-identified adult Church members in the US are married, but it very well might not be that way in the future.
Interesting data, Stephen. Thanks.
Based on the data, then, would it be accurate to say that the number of non-practioners on the church’s roles are disproportionately high? I’m curious about this being a “survivor’s effect” type of thing.
I guess it depends on disproportionate to what. If you mean disproportionately single relative to LDS self-identifiers on the rolls, then yes, that would explain the discrepancy in theory, but again I’m just conjecturing how exactly they came up with the “majority single” figure.
It doesn’t necessarily mean that the non-practicing are disproportionately single. It could be that they were single when they went inactive and nobody informed the Church of their marriages. (Just saying. I suspect that they are disproportionately single.)
Good stuff–thanks Stephen.
I do think the discrepancy comes from leaders using (“raw”) membership records. In my experience leadership thinks of inactive members as members, whether they would self-identify as such or not. It’s not about inflating numbers; they were baptized, they “[came] into the fold of God,” and we have an obligation to them until they choose to explicitly leave.
To Chad’s point, I’d guess those inactive members are more likely to be single because 1) they’re less likely to be affiliated with any religion and unaffiliated people are more likely to be single, and 2) they’re more likely to be converts and converts are more likely to be single. And maybe 3) being single makes people less likely to stay active. But that’s all supposition. I’m sure some of them only appear to be single because we don’t know about their marriage.
Still, with only 54% of self-identified members identifying as married, I’ll bet the “sound bite” is correct for the definition of member that the leaders who said it had in mind. And if you’re thinking “How can we bring inactive members back to church?” then that’s the definition you should use and the conclusion that you have to make the Church welcoming to singles is correct. But if you’re looking around your congregation on Sunday morning and thinking “Most of the adults here are married” that’s probably true too.
I imagine that every one of my non-active but still onthe rolls family members is shown on the church records as single even though they are not. They all left the church in their early 20s, so how would the church know one way or the other what happened to their martial status?
So, is it the general consensus that the church’s membership records are unreliable? And that church leaders who rely on those membership records are making errant decisions?
@ReTX: I think that’s a huge part of it: people who were baptized earlier in their life when they were single.
JI: “So, is it the general consensus that the church’s membership records are unreliable?”
For some uses, yes.
“And that church leaders who rely on those membership records are making errant decisions?” Not necessarily. Depending on the decision that in-name-only members might “count” like RLD noted, and I assume that they often use more precise numbers that are less public.
Are Church membership records perfect? Of course not–and nobody knows that better than the Church leaders who use them. Rest assured nobody is choosing temple locations based on the number of members on the rolls. As I recall, the primary criteria are the number of temple workers and the number of members doing temple work for their own ancestors. Leader and Clerk Resources gives local leaders a variety of reports and “key indicators” to help them understand their units, from the number of members attending meetings to the number of members with current temple recommends to the number of ministering interviews, and a lot more. I’m sure Area and General leaders have even more information. It’s not a question of which number is “right,” it’s a question of which number is relevant to the question you’re trying to answer or the issue you’re trying to address.
I don’t think that the list is primarily made up of people who were baptized young and then left. The lists are full of people who were just blessed as babies by grandparents. It would be very useful if ward records made it as easy to see if they were baptized as it is to see what Priesthood office the men have on record.
Handbook 33.6.2
“A person age 9 or older who has a membership record but has not been baptized and confirmed is not a member of record. However, the ward in which the person lives retains the membership record until the person is 18. At that time, if the person chooses not to be baptized, the bishop cancels the membership record. The stake president’s permission is required.”
RLD, That’s all well and good, but if bishops don’t cancel the records, well, your citation has no value unless it is actually used.
I’ve never been in a position to deal with membership records directly, but they are are audited twice a year. I’m going to guess that directive is followed fairly consistently.
Maybe worth mentioning that the “soundbite” was from Elder Gong:
“Also, the majority of adult Church members are now unmarried, widowed, or divorced. This is a significant change. It includes more than half our Relief Society sisters and more than half our adult priesthood brothers. This demographic pattern has been the case in the worldwide Church since 1992 and in the Church in the United States and Canada since 2019.”
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/general-conference/2021/04/16gong?lang=eng#p19
Nvm–I see you mentioned the source in the original post. Sorry for the reflexive pedantry!