I’m not sure the legend of the map makes complete sense to me: It says it’s taking the population reported by the Church in each county, and expressing it as a percentage of the county’s total population as reported in the 2000 census. But there’s a large number of counties that show “none reported.” In fact, there are far, far too many counties with “none reported” to be accurate. There’s no way the Church counts zero members in all of those counties.
Is there just a cutoff point where a small enough percentage becomes “none”?
I don’t know how the membership statistics are broken down, but I know that every ward and every stake has geographic boundaries, and that virtually all Church membership records are assigned to wards and stakes (or branches, districts and missions, which, for this administrative purpose, are identical). So it shouldn’t be too hard for the Church to report its population geographically.
But of course, the boundaries of wards, stakes, missions and so forth often don’t correspond with county or state boundaries. A good example was the Canada Montreal Mission, which, when I served in it, included two counties of New York.
Maybe the ZIP codes (or postal codes) in member addresses are used.
I guess the map does show a cutoff of 0.1 percent. They must be counting anything less than that as “none reported.” I think it would have been better to say, “Less than 0.1 percent.”
There really are some extraordinary anomalies I’d like to know more about: A county is the Florida panhandle with more than 10%, a county in southern Iowa with more than 10%, and one in the middle of Nebraska with more than 25%!
I’m not sure the legend of the map makes complete sense to me: It says it’s taking the population reported by the Church in each county, and expressing it as a percentage of the county’s total population as reported in the 2000 census. But there’s a large number of counties that show “none reported.” In fact, there are far, far too many counties with “none reported” to be accurate. There’s no way the Church counts zero members in all of those counties.
Is there just a cutoff point where a small enough percentage becomes “none”?
I didn’t even know the Church kept track of members per county.
I don’t know how the membership statistics are broken down, but I know that every ward and every stake has geographic boundaries, and that virtually all Church membership records are assigned to wards and stakes (or branches, districts and missions, which, for this administrative purpose, are identical). So it shouldn’t be too hard for the Church to report its population geographically.
But of course, the boundaries of wards, stakes, missions and so forth often don’t correspond with county or state boundaries. A good example was the Canada Montreal Mission, which, when I served in it, included two counties of New York.
Maybe the ZIP codes (or postal codes) in member addresses are used.
I guess the map does show a cutoff of 0.1 percent. They must be counting anything less than that as “none reported.” I think it would have been better to say, “Less than 0.1 percent.”
There really are some extraordinary anomalies I’d like to know more about: A county is the Florida panhandle with more than 10%, a county in southern Iowa with more than 10%, and one in the middle of Nebraska with more than 25%!