Great membership resource at
http://www.fullerconsideration.com/membership.php with a big section on children of record, see below without the nice figures/graphs. Best best to click on the link which is easier to read and includes the nice figures/graphs.
Children of Record
Increase of Children of Record
Definition: The number of children age 0-7 who are added to the records of the church without baptism, including children born to active members as well as convert children of record. Prior to 1989 these children were counted, but not included in the membership totals.
Children of Record Baptisms
Definition: Children age 8 who are baptized.
As discussed earlier, in 1910 and 1918 the general conference reports included "total baptisms," and in 1913 "baptism rate" from which total baptisms can be inferred. If baptism rate is assumed at 1% as discussed earlier, then subtracting the convert baptisms from this value yields children of record baptisms for 1910, 1913 and 1918 at 11,917, 10,298, and 9,801 respectively. Linear interpolation can be used to estimate between the known values.
Increase in Children of Record has not been reported in a consistent manner over the years. In 1914, 1918, and from 1921-1981 the annual reports listed "children blessed." From 1982-1987 and from 1997-2014 it reported "Increase of children of record." Separate figures for "Children of Record Baptized" were given from 1921-1996. The increase of children of record can generally be related to the children of record baptized 8 years later. During the last such pairing for which both of these figures were reported, 1987-1995, this ratio was 71.86%. Using this relationship projected forwards, and linear interpolation to fill in the gaps, yields Figure 2a:
As seen, when the reports were changed in 1997 to "increase of children of record" as opposed to "children of record baptized," it intuitively appeared that the same statistic was being reported under a different name. Interpolation yields a sudden and inexplicable drop in both statistics. It can be assumed, for the sake of continuity of data, that starting in 1997 the LDS church reported children of record baptisms, but under the incorrect label "increase of children of record." This assumption carried to the present yields Figure 2b:
As will be discussed later, activity rates can be inferred by the number of children born into the LDS church. When that particular method is employed on the data in Figure 2b, it yields an activity rate by births for 2009 as being between 50% and 60%. An analysis of the data at cumorah.com reveals the average global activity rate of the LDS church in 2009 should have been approximately 30.5%, which is instead consistent with the children of record baptisms value shown in Figure 2a, which yields an activity rate of 32.1%. This indicates that in 2009 the data in general conference were reported correctly, which prompts us to seek a third explanation for the irregularity.
In 2008 the values reported as increase of children of record took a sudden 30% increase, and have remained near that higher rate every year since. If it is assumed that this sudden increase represented the actual change from reporting children of record baptisms to increase of children of record, we obtain Figure 2c:
There are three reasons to accept Figure 2c as representing the most reliable interpretation of the data:
1: The data appear to be continuous, without the unusual jumps seen in Figure 2a.
2: The data yield the correct activity rate for 2009 as shown below in Figure 2f, as opposed to method B which yields the activity rate shown in Figure 2e.
3: The data yield an activity rate that declines steadily between 1990 and 2010, shown in Figure 2f, as opposed to dropping suddenly and recovering as shown in Figure 2d.
Increase of children of record prior to 1910 can be estimated by using conversion estimates described previously to estimate convert children of record, and adding that to recorded births, which is described in the next section. Children of record baptisms prior to 1910 can be estimated by taking the increase in children of record from 8 years prior, and adding one-eighth of the sum of the convert children of record from the preceding eight years times the activity rate (to account for retention of converts). These methods, combined with the method above, yield Figure 2g:
Recorded Births
Definition: The number of children born to members of the LDS church, who are added to the records of the church.
From 1914 to 2014, when increase of children of record is either known or inferred, recorded births are estimated by subtracting convert children of record from increase of children of record. This yields Figure 3a:
Birth rate is required to estimate births prior to 1914.
Birth Rate
Definition: The number of births to all Mormons, active and inactive, per thousand members, regardless of whether or not the newborns are added to church records.
The Mormon birth rate was first given as 40.2 in this report for 1908. It was then officially reported occasionally from 1910 to 1919, and consistently from 1920 to 1983.
In 1983, the last year when the LDS church reported a birth rate, the reported rate of 24.5 per thousand was very near the Utah birth rate at the time of 24.7. Therefore, it is assumed that since 1983 the LDS birth rate has remained somewhat near the Utah birth rate, which can be found in this report, and at this website.
Prior to 1908 the birth rate can be estimated using known number of births per woman, which are presented in Figure 4.5 of this report. Assuming the average woman married at 22, the number falling to 19 in the late 1800's due to polygamy, and rising to 23 by 1912, the average number of children born to each woman during her lifetime, for fertile mothers in any given year, can be estimated based on the values for the range of mothers born the number of years prior to the given year equal to the current Mormon life expectancy, which will be discussed later, and 19-23 years prior to the given year. Dividing that number by the range in fertility years for the women yields approximate number of children born to each woman that year.
The proportion of fertile women vs. non-fertile women is equal to the fertility range divided by life expectancy. The number of fertile women is equal to the total church membership times the fertility proportion times the ratio of women to men, which can be computed from the total number of women and men recorded by the Federal Census Bureau. Those data can be found in full here. The number of actual women bearing children is the number of fertile women times some unknown factor. The factor of children born to each birthing woman is the lifetime number of children born to women, estimated using the average described above, divided by the fertility span in years. The birth rate, then, can be estimated by multiplying the number of women bearing children by the factor of children born to each woman, times one-thousand, divided by total membership. In the final equation, the total membership and range of fertility cancel out, leaving only the ratio k unknown.
Because the birth rates for 1908, 1910, and 1911 are known, the ratio k can be estimated, and is found to be very near 0.7, which yields 39.5, 39.0, and 37.2 respectively, while the reported rates for those years are 40.2, 38, and 38 respectively. The resulting birth rate for all years is shown in Figure 3b:
Using these birth rates, and assuming 100% of all births to Mormons were recorded prior to 1914, which will be discussed later, the number of recorded births prior to 1914 can be estimated, completing our estimate of number of recorded births, shown in Figure 3c:
Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 02/22/2020 04:27PM by scotchipman.