And this is especially true in Utah as compared to the rest of the nation. Rick Phillips: Conservative denominations in the United States tend to have more women than men, so the sex ratio imbalance in Mormonism is not particularly surprising, even if it is rather severe.
The “shortage of Mormon men” we’ve heard so much about lately is far worse in Utah than it is in the rest of the nation.
RNS: Your research suggests that the increasingly imbalanced sex ratio among Utah Mormons is like the canary in the proverbial coal mine: this is a sign of something bigger, that Utah Mormons are actually becoming less religious.
In Utah, he claims, there are now 150 Mormon women for every 100 Mormon men, “a 50 percent oversupply of women,” even though , there are actually more men than women in the state. He says Mormon men leave the faith in higher numbers than women, making the statistics of available, active LDS singles significantly lopsided by gender. According to a Pew study released in May of this year, 64% of people who are raised LDS in America still self-identify as Mormon as adults, which is higher than the retention rate for Catholics (59%) or mainline Protestants (45%).
The In a study based on data from the General Social Survey, Phillips and Cragun show that between 19, 92.6% of Mormon respondents in the MCR [Mormon Culture Region] who reported being LDS at age 16 were still members of the church when they were surveyed. But even though disaffiliation is a national social trend, I’m sure that’s cold comfort to the general authorities in Salt Lake City.
So I tracked down sociologist Rick Phillips, who with Ryan Cragun has authored the forthcoming study on the sex ratio disparity among Utah Mormons.
Both scholars are past presidents of the Mormon Social Science Association.– JKR RNS: You note that Mormonism has the worst sex imbalance ratio of any church except the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
There may be small differences in your criteria, like age requirements and so on.
But most likely, anyone that you find should be a match.
You attribute the gender gap to a growing trend of apostasy among Mormon men. Phillips: There has been a general secularizing trend in the United States for the past 25 years.