The Instituto Nacional de Información Estadística y Geográfica has recently published 2010 census results on religious affiliation in Mexico at
http://www.inegi.org.mx/. The census counted 314,932 self-identified Latter-day Saints in Mexico compared to 205,229 Latter-day Saints in
2000, a 53.5% increase over the decade whereas officially reported LDS membership statistics for Mexico reported 1,234,545 members in 2010 and 884,071 members in 2000, a 39.6% increase during the same time period. Despite this increase in the number of members identifying as Latter-day Saints in the census, nearly 69% of the increase in membership between 2000 and 2010 reported by the LDS Church was unaccounted for in the 2010 census. The percentage of members reported by the LDS Church who self identified on the 2000 and 2010 Mexican censuses slightly increased from 23.2% to 25.5%.
Below is a list of Mexican states ranked by the number of self-identified Latter-day Saints on the 2010 Mexican census.
- México - 44,015
- Distrito Federal - 28,440
- Veracruz - 24,063
- Puebla - 18,722
- Chihuahua - 16,493
- Nuevo León - 15,579
- Tamaulipas - 13,235
- Baja California - 12,712
- Hidalgo - 11,828
- Coahuila de Zaragoza - 11,698
- Sonora - 11,252
- Yucatán - 10,547
- Oaxaca - 10,222
- Jalisco - 9,158
- Sinaloa - 8,672
- Chiapas - 8,501
- Morelos - 7,712
- Quintana Roo - 6,517
- Guanajuato - 5,588
- Guerrero - 5,584
- Tabasco - 4,691
- Durango - 4,314
- Michoacán - 4,192
- San Luis Potosí - 3,634
- Querétaro - 3,300
- Campeche - 3,133
- Aguascalientes - 2,265
- Baja California Sur - 2,006
- Tlaxala - 1,991
- Nayarit - 1,843
- Zacatecas - 1,632
- Colima - 1,393
The percentage of self-identified Latter-day Saints by state varied significantly on the 2010 census, with Yucatán (one member per 185 inhabitants) possessing the highest percentage of members whereas Michoacán (one member per 1,038) possessing the lowest. Overall there was one Latter-day Saint per 357 inhabitants in Mexico as a whole according to the 2010 Mexican census. One in 91 Mexicans is nominally affiliated with the LDS Church.
Lastly, the map below provides the ratio of LDS members to the general population by Mexican state. Red indicates one member per 249 or fewer inhabitants, yellow indicates one member per 250-499 inhabitants, green indicates one member per 500-749 inhabitants, and blue indicates one member per 750 or more inhabitants.
View Percent LDS by Mexican State in a larger map
5 comments:
By the 2020 Mexican census, the gap between self-identified members and official church totals in Mexico will be well over 1 million members. You can bet that another round of articles by sociologists and demographers touting the continued inflation of church statistics in 2010 censuses is on the way. We need to seriously rethink how we report our membership. By my calculations, people who no longer consider themself LDS but who are counted as members in Mexico constitute more than 1 out of every 20 church members worldwide.
The big issue with this (and has been for 50 years) is who decides exactly who gets dropped and by what standard? My experience as an EQP in an inner city branch was that most of the people on the "really really inactive" list wouldn't talk to us, so we couldn't officially determine their willingness to stay on the list. Also, we were instructed *not* to suggest or encourage people to request their name being removed. Many felt they were no longer mormons, but didn't want to bother helping us clean up our records, they just wanted us to leave them alone.
It's interesting to see how other churches handle this. JW's don't report baptized members, only ones who submit their witnessing reports. SDA's have some kind of timeout policy in which people who haven't been active for a certain period of time are automatically removed (or deactivated somehow and no longer included in totals).
It would be very interesting for the Church to do a membership census, contacting everyone on the list and asking people what they felt their status was. However, it won't happen because writing people off violates the whole "lost sheep" principle.
Hi Matt,
I found a mistake when you compared the number of self-identified Latter Day Saints in México, because the 2000 Census count only person 5 ages or older, but the number in the 2010 Census Count all ages, then the correct comparison numbers are this:
2000 205,229 self identified LDS
2010 289,064 self identified LDS
This is an increase of 83,853 members net 40.8% in 10 years.
Then the diference of 25,868 is in the rang from 0-4 years.
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