ARIS 2008 Report: Part II - Demography

Since women live longer than men there are normally more women than men in the population. The current 

sex ratio or gender balance of the national U.S. adult population is 49 males to every 52 females. Table 7 

reveals that there is a split among the religious traditions whereby Christian groups tend to meet or exceed 

this female bias whereas all the non-Christians in the bottom five rows exceed the national average of 49 

percent males. Among the religious groups having more female adherents are the Pentecostals, Baptists, 

and Mainline Christians of which 56%-58% are females. The most gender unbalanced group is the Nones, 

those who profess no religion or self-identified as atheists or agnostics. The ratio of 60 males to 40 females 

is a remarkable result. These gender patterns correspond with many earlier findings that show women to 

be more religious than men particularly in majority Christian societies. The male gender bias found among 

the minority religious traditions such as Muslims and the Eastern Religions is due to the high proportion of 

young immigrant males in these groups.

Nationally 60 percent of the adult population is aged under 50 years and 40 percent is 50 or older. The 

Catholic population as the country's largest tradition is not surprisingly closest to this age balance. A close 

examination of Table 8 reveals that the age composition of the religious traditions fluctuates widely but the 

overall tendency is again for a split between the Judeo-Christian traditions and the others towards the bottom 

of Table 8. This binary trend is particularly noticeable for the proportion of adherents in the oldest age group. 

Baptists and Jews have the highest proportions of adherents over 70 years of age. 

The proportion of younger adherents varies more across religious traditions. The Generic Christian tradition 

has the most youthful adherents among the Christian groups, which helps explain the recent growth in this 

category of religious self-identification as shown in Table 3. The age profile of the minority Eastern religions 

and Islam, which as previously noted were disproportionately male, shows they are also very young with about 

40 percent of their adult adherents under age 30. This reflects their largely recent immigrant origins. The 

much larger None group, which we also previously noted was heavily male, has in addition a largely young age 

profile with over 70 percent under 50 years of age and very few older people.

The marital status of any population tends to correlate with or be affected by its age composition. Thus as Table 8 

shows, traditions such as Muslim, Eastern Religions, and None, with many young adherents, would be expected 

to and do contain large proportions of single, never-married adults. By contrast those with an older age profile, 

such as the Baptist, Mainline, Pentecostal and Jewish traditions, have many more widowed persons. 

However, with the issue of marital status we would expect to see some influence on the statistics of the teachings of 

the various religious traditions. This should apply especially among those that advocate the sanctity of marriage as well 

as strict sexual morality and so disfavor cohabitation of couples "living in sin" - or have prohibitions against divorce. 

As regards currently married adults, the Mormons and Baptists have the highest proportions with 68 and 60 percent 

respectively, reflecting the emphasis on family values in these traditions. Cohabitation or "living with a partner" is 

more prevalent among younger people than older persons so we should expect traditions with a younger age profile 

to have greater proportions of those just "living together". This appears to be true as this phenomenon is more 

prevalent towards the bottom of Table 9 and highest among the NRM, Muslim and None traditions while it is very 

low among the Mormon and conservative Protestant Denomination traditions. The latter two groups seem best able 

to transmit their moral teachings to the young.

Divorce appears to be widespread and no religious tradition is immune, nor are Nones the most likely to be currently 

divorced. Catholics' divorce rate is close to the national average. Divorce rates are lowest among Mormons and Jews, 

traditions known for the emphasis they place on married life and the family. Divorced and separated persons, on 

the other hand, are most common in the New Religion Movements, other minority religions, and the Pentecostal/

Charismatic tradition. Of course divorce and separation are linked to marriage for those who never marry and 

remain single or cohabit cannot have this marital status.

One final way to measure commitment to "traditional or normative family values" is to create a combined index 

of the proportions divorced and cohabiting, whereby those tradition that score lowest are the most familial. 

The traditions with the lowest percentages on this index are Mormons (11%), Jews (13%) and the Protestant 

Denominations (13%). Each of these traditions is relatively small in terms of numbers and it might be expected that conformity with religious and social norms is easier to maintain in a smaller group than a larger one.