Why Are the Most Religious Mormons No Longer Having the Most Kids? (This Changes Everything)

Unseen Insights: Mormon Fertility Trends and Cultural Dynamics In this special episode of Basecamp, we delve into exclusive data regarding fertility trends among the Mormon community, contributed by one of our listeners. Through a study involving 310 members from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, fascinating trends emerge among different age and religiosity groups. We discuss the rapid transition to wokeness, fertility collapse, and the impact of cultural pride versus deontological religious rules on fertility rates. The episode explores clan-based versus communalist moral systems and their influence on Mormon society, offering intriguing insights into the future of Mormon demographics and culture.

Malcolm Collins: [00:00:00] HeLlo, Simone, I am excited to be here with you today. Today, we are going to be having a very special episode where we are going to be giving you Basecamp listeners access to exclusive data that no one else has seen. And you know why? Because one of you put it together.

Yes.

So anyway, I was talking with this fan, and he is saying, anecdotally, as a Mormon so, obviously he has a lot of insight into what the Mormons are doing, the fertility rate among the Mormon community, he goes, it seems to me that the most religious of Mormons are having two big issues.

One is, is they are going woke much faster than other Mormons. Like, the individuals within their communities seem to go woke at a higher rate than other communities.

He noted. This mostly happens when they deconvert, but this is still a problem because their kids will be going to the same schools

Microphone (Wireless Microphone Rx)-4: which can become a drain on the community overall.

Malcolm Collins: And two is, they just seem to be being hit by fertility collapse much harder. than just generically religious Mormons. [00:01:00] And I was like, that's a really interesting observation.

Would you mind trying a study on that? And he actually went on and did a study and a big one. He got 310 people involved in this.

Would you like to know more?

Malcolm Collins: And so, he found out that his hypothesis was born out in the data and It gives us one of the keys for a new theory at solving fertility collapse that I have been building.

Simone Collins: Oh, yummy. I'm excited for this.

Malcolm Collins: I'm quoting him right now in an email where he sent the data to me. I took it upon myself to do a study on age, religiosity, and fertility among members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints.

Everyone in the study has strong ties to the state of Utah and still maintains some relationship. For some, it may be very complicated, with Mormons as a cultural group. This is based on a random sampling of 310 people I found on Facebook for the study. They are divided into six groups. Groups 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, with [00:02:00] 1 being least religious and 6 being most religious.

Findings were stark. Among those aged 65 the correlation between religiosity and fertility was 0. 8%. They had an average of f 4. 53. So 65 and older for a 4. 5 average fertility r mormon. But that's also w Remember mormons used to

For and younger. The fertility rates dropped dramatically among those 35 to 64. The correlation between religiosity and fertility rate was 0. 16. So, no, it dropped to a rather low level. It dropped from 0. 45 to 0. 16 in this next generation. And I'm going to, you know, I think what's really happening here and why this hasn't been picked up in data yet is, I think that this is a new phenomenon.

Where in some religious traditions within the [00:03:00] modern post cell phone generation generation. Fertility rates drop as religiosity enters extreme ranges. But we'll, we'll, we'll talk more about the data here. Going back to the quote, what appears to be the case is that among the strongly religious, they started having kids less, but among those less religious, they still had cultural reasons to have kids.

35 to 64, Age cohort had a fertility rate of 2.92. Among those age 25 to 34, the correlation between religiosity and fertility was 0.32, so much stronger than the 35 to 64 group, but not as high as the 65 plus age group. They currently have a fertility rate of 1.1, but I expect this group to eventually have 0.9 more children on average.

So round out to about two barely below replacement rate

Simone Collins: so wait, you meant 2.1 then.

Malcolm Collins: You just

Simone Collins: said 1. 1 earlier.

Malcolm Collins: No, they have a current fertility rate of [00:04:00] 1. 1, but he expects them to have an additional 0. 9 kids as they age. Oh, oh, sorry, of

Simone Collins: this sample. Okay, yeah, sorry, okay, now I'm following.

Malcolm Collins: By the way, I don't cut out when you misunderstand something, because other people have pointed out in the comments, they're like, if Simone has misunderstood something, more than half your audience Not

Simone Collins: everyone is as sleep deprived as Simone.

So, that's Maybe not, but yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well then honestly you should be going to bed earlier and putting the kids to bed earlier because they're really tired when I wake them up, which to me implies that they're not going down. They're refusing to go to bed. Simone, if you get them in the room alone earlier, they'll go to bed earlier.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: All right. Sorry, this is our parenting negotiation here. Being a bad, bad husband, just being to like, you have to get more sleep wife. I demand it. No choice do you have in the matter? Okay. Previously. I thought these trends would only appear for those born post 1980, but the data clearly shows them emerging for those.

Born post [00:05:00] 1960. So the internet was not the major factor here. Oh, I was wrong. Yeah. Okay. I would say it may deal more with economic factors, but I'm not entirely sure. Furthermore, I , acknowledge the largest limitation to the study. is mere subjectively rating people one to six, but I feel like it's not too different than doing the same thing with people on the Jewish spectrum by analyzing clothing, style, aesthetics, activities, language, et cetera.

I also acknowledge that my Facebook may be a slightly higher fertility sample than average but I'm unsure about this. This is where it gets interesting. For the 64 plus age group, the fertility rate for those most religious six rating, their fertility rate was 5.4. Most of the other religious groups hovered around four, so boomers and the silent generation Mormons usually had around four-ish kids on average.

Obviously some as high as seven in sizeable numbers. and somewhere as low as two in sizable numbers. However, for the 35 to 64 age group, the most religious, a six [00:06:00] rating, the fertility rate collapsed to 3. 21. But the group that was rated as four actually rose to 5. 27 from 4. 4 in the older cohort.. So I want to make this clear. In the younger cohort, as time has gone on, the The fertility rate of less religious Mormons has gone up, not down.

Okay? So Mormons who considered themselves slightly less religious than half of Mormons. Oh no, wait, so sorry, what was the four group? It went up to six. So, Three was average. So these are people who consider themselves slightly more religious than the average Mormon but are not at the five or six level.

So these are individuals who would have some Mormon friends, some non Mormon friends, but would generally follow all of the rules and blah blah blah blah blah.

Okay.

The