Religion, Fecundity, and Politics

From the Wall Street Journal, 8/20/07:

If you picked 100 adults out of the population who attended their house of worship nearly every week or more often, they would have 223 children among them, on average, according to the 2006 General Social Survey. Among 100 people who attended less than once per year or never, you would find just 158 kids. This 41% fertility gap between religious and secular people is especially meaningful because people tend to worship more or less like their parents. According to data collected in 1999 by Gallup, 60% of adults who were taken to church at least once per month as children grew up to attend at least this often; only 15% stopped attending as adults.

The demographic implications are even more profound for the political left, where a disproportionate number of secularists are located. Religious people who call themselves politically "conservative" or "very conservative" are having, on average, an astounding 78% more kids than secular liberals. Studies show that people are even more likely to vote like their parents than they are to worship like them. The secular left, therefore, has to rely on the tough slog of bringing people from the political and religious middle over to their views. The religious right simply has to keep having lots of babies.

- Arthur C. Brooks (professor at Syracuse University's school of public affairs and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute)

Godless Georgia

Even though based on seven-year-old data, the above map is enlightening. Among other things, it tells me that the Bible Belt runs north and south through the middle of the country, not (as we commonly think) east and west through the southern/southeastern reaches.

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The state where I now live, Georgia, is not as religious as it's reputed to be, though my home state of Oregon lives up to its billing as the least-churched part of the country.

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All the Mormons make it pretty easy to figure out where Utah is. And notice that Southern California is more churchgoing than Northern - thanks to the Catholic Hispanics?

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I'd love to see similar maps done separately just for Catholics, Jews, mainline Protestants, and Evangelicals. (Atheists would be good, too, Hemant, but until you start your own "churches," you're too hard to count.) - Update: there are some additional maps available here.

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Anyone like to add any sage observations?

Quitcherbitchen: At Least You've Got Food, a Place to Sleep, and an Internet Connection

[We'll leave ecclesiology behind for now in order to look at another topic of interest.]

Here's a site that provides comparative statistics about the world's demographics (it's more interesting than the way I just worded the description!): www.miniature-earth.com. The Flash presentation is maybe 5 minutes long.

In a similar vein, globalrichlist.com will show you where you rank among the world's richest people. You may be surprised, especially when you see your percentile. Of course, we have a high cost of living here in the "first world," but still . . .