What I most notice is that those that had low 18 to 29, there are higher numbers for the child rearing years, which seems to suggest the wanting to raise the children how they were raised. If that is correct than I would suggest that we need to make good memories for our children so that they want to raise their children how they themselves were raised.

Birth rates of the various groups need to be considered as well as the strictness or closeness of the family life, divorce rates, etc.. I think the best way to retain our youth is family closeness and parents always setting the example and trying not to be hypocrites (that is a total turnoff for our youth).

What worries me most is the low numbers for the old and closer to death. How can that be?

I admit I didn’t read the study, just looked at the graph.

http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/insight-religious-none-generation-z

Eric, that actually makes sense. Although that would imply the numbers here don’t break out types of Mormon. It’s weird as typically the header is he sum of the subcategories such as for historically black protestant which is then broken down into baptist, methodist, etc. But for Mormon the header is 1.6% and then two subcategories of 1.6% and < 0.3%. I assume you're right that they just added them together but I think < 0.3% just means so small that the total was still 1.6%. I'd never noticed that before with the Pew data. I'm not quite sure what fully to make of it. In any case, I think they read it wrong if I understand it correctly.

I don’t understand how you came to this conclusion. From the data you provide, it appears that while more than a third of unaffiliated are of the current generation (the inverse of your statement) only about 25% of the current generation is unaffiliated (I’m guessing on where the values are on the far right end of the line plot).

If you expand the Mormon section (www.pewforum.org/religious-landscape-study/), it shows “1.6%” for Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and “< 0.3%" for Other Mormon. If someone just took the numbers and added them together, they'd end up with 1.9%.

Fbisti, yeah, the summary and discussion of the poll was a bit underwhelming. As I mentioned they compare Mormon numbers with Pew but misrpresent the Pew numbers. Although as someone mentioned to me elsewhere the 1.9% and 1.6% are within the error bars of 0.4%. (Although barely) I definitely agree though that this could also be due to other artifacts. Which is why I’m a bit cautious pushing that 1.9% too much. Comparing different surveys with different methodologies is fraught with problems. So I’m not pinning anything on that 1.9%. I want to see the latest ARIS which I find to be the most reliable. (I have a lot of issues with Pew’s data as they get some pretty questionable results for some questions – there’s also questions of being biased by oversampling in Utah County with Pew.)

Typically in these self-identification studies Mormon doesn’t always mean LDS. Looking at both Pew and ARIS stuff there are reasons to think a few non-LDS ended up in the survey although it’s ambiguous. (Primarily answers to questions on doctrine in Pew)

Adano, yes, I just meant that Muslims and Buddhists skew younger than Mormons.

I read through the full report. Based on my 30+ years of experience in survey research, I am impressed by the robust methodology. However (in my overly pedantic world), at least one of the authors’ own statements about some aspects of the findings isn’t fully accurate:
The study sampled the youngest adult currently residing in the household, so it is a sample of adults and cannot be used to conclude: “currently, 1.9% of the *public* identifies as Mormon.” The full questionnaire was not included in the report, but such a conclusion could only be made if there was a question determining what religious affiliation is claimed by each member of the household, adults and minors. So that conclusion should have read “of the adult public.”
Other comments…
-The key question used the term “Mormon” and therefore would include any fundamentalist or other historical spinoff religion that uses that moniker. I don’t know how this question has differed in terminology in other such studies.
-Differences in sampling and instrument (nature and size of the sampling frame and weighting; differences in wording) between studies can easily account for differences in results (1.4% vs 1.9%) that are technically statistically significant due to the large sample sizes. Though actual differences in such statistics can also be actual and the result of actual changes over time. So except for differences/errors introduced by the ever-increasing non-response bias (a growing proportion of sampled respondents willing to take the survey), only a study that is identical in design can (with high accuracy) identify changes resulting only from time.
Still, fascinating data. Thanks Clark

Saying that Muslims (etc) tend to be young is not the same as saying that young people tend to be Muslim. You appear to be saying the second thing here. The figure supports the first statement but not the second.