Darin G. Clay and Dr. Mark Showalter, Economics
It is a well-known fact that the success of the missionary effort of the Church is highly correlated with economic prosperity. Specifically, the convert baptism rates are higher in less prosperous nations than in relatively wealthy nations. Opponents of the Church have cited this fact in support of the claim that the church appeals to potential members because of its relatively wealthy membership rather than because of any spiritual experiences or “House-of-Israel” arguments. Church adherents assert that poor nations more readily accept the church because of “unmeasurables” such as humility and heritage (i.e. descendants of the Nephite/Lamanite populations). This study was an attempt to reconcile empirical data with speculative hypotheses to determine which group, if any, is correct.
The Missionary Dept. of the church keeps detailed statistical reports on a mission-bymission basis that were used in this study to quantify the relationship between standard of living and baptism rates. While data on “humility” rates were not obtainable, data are available on the predominate ethnic backgrounds of various populations. A simple binary (yes or no) variable was created where “yes” was assigned to populations of missions that had very little European or African immigration. Mixed populations (Brazil and Hawaii for example) were excluded from the study. Since income levels and the cost of living change from mission to mission within a country, “real monthly cost per missionary” was used along with “real gross domestic product” as income and cost of living measures for a given mission.
After the data were panelized (grouped by mission), statistical analyses (OLS and MLE methods properly adjusted for anomalies) were performed to identify which variables were significantly correlated with convert baptisms. The strength of the relationships from the “best fit” models for “converts in a mission” and “converts per missionary” are reported on the next page.
We can conclude that both income level and heritage are highly correlated with baptism rates, but a “yes” response to the heritage variable affects the baptism rate nearly twice as much as the difference between the missions with the highest and lowest standard of living. This implies that although standard of living does effect the convert baptism rate in a mission, it does not effect it as much as the predominate heritage of the mission’s population.
The author wishes to gratefully acknowledge the generous assistance of Dr. Mark Showalter and Richard O. Cowen.