Forging new directions in the demographics of religion

Articles

Written by Jessie Saeli, edited by Nicole R. Smith and Rachel J. Bacon Modeling Religious Change combines demography, the scientific study of religion, and computational models to create simulations of religious change in the USA, Norway, and India. Our research tackles the challenge of creating more accurate projections of religious change in populations by taking account of multiple dimensions of religiosity. Building on our previous projects and traditional methods of creating …

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2020 Religion Census

Data

According to the 2020 U.S. Religion Census, there are 356,739 religious congregations in the United States, comprised of 161 million people (48.6% of the population). A congregation is a group of persons who meet together regularly for worship. In different religious groups this can mean parishes, churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, or other sites where a …

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A changing population in Norway

Data

We used world population data from the United Nations to create this population pyramid of Norway from 1950 projected to 2100. Our key takeaways?   This animation visualizes the “demographic transition” predicted to occur this century.  Demographic transition is the shift from high fertility & mortality to low fertility & mortality. That is: people will live longer …

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How individual decisions shape religious groups over time

Articles

Written by Jessie Saeli, edited by Nicole R. Smith and Rachel J. Bacon Modeling religious change with agent-based models Societies are comprised of diverse individuals, each one characterized by their own goals, relationships, and personality. Modeling Religious Change uses cutting-edge agent-based models to incorporate and track individual characteristics, allowing us to measure the impact of complex factors on personal (non)religious identity …

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Understanding changing populations with the cohort-component method

Articles

Written by Jessie Saeli, edited by Nicole R. Smith and Rachel J. Bacon When governments set out to design long-term projects and plans, they need to know how many people those future projects must accommodate. Many turn to demographic projections to provide data on future population sizes and make-up. The cohort-component method (CCM) is commonly used by the government and academia to create …

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Adapting Cohort-Component Methods to a Microsimulation: A case study

Articles

Ivan Puga-Gonzalez, Rachel J. Bacon, David Voas, F. LeRon Shults, George Hodulik, Wesley J. Wildman Abstract Social scientists generally take United Nations (UN) population projections as the baseline when considering the potential impact of any changes that could affect fertility, mortality or migration, and the UN typically does projections using the cohort-component method (CCM). The CCM technique is computationally simple …

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Can we measure (and predict) religious change?

Articles

Written by Jessie Saeli, edited by Nicole R. Smith and Rachel J. Bacon We can’t predict the future, but we want to get closer The year is 2050. Although millions of Europeans and North Americans have abandoned Christianity and become nonreligious, the share of nonreligious people worldwide has decreased in comparison to increases in Christian, Muslim, and Hindu populations. …

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Religious Exiting and Social Networks: Computer Simulations of Religious/Secular Pluralism

Articles

Research Article Authors: Ryan Cragun, Kevin McCaffree, Ivan Puga-Gonzalez, Wesley Wildman, F. LeRon Shults Abstract Statistical models attempting to predict who will disaffiliate from religions have typically accounted for less than 15% of the variation in religious affiliations, suggesting that we have only a partial understanding of this vital social process. Using agent-based simulations in …

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