USATODAY: Survey: Americans freely change, or drop, their religions

As a followup to my post yesterday on the Pew study, USATODAY has More from the Pew Survey and this great interactive GRAPHIC: A state-by-state look at religious affiliations:

Comments

[D]

I spent some time yesterday looking at the Pew report. I found two statistical trends very interesting (warning: I am not a statistician, but I can read simple graphs like these :-). I also realize that this isn't a great survey; only 35000+ people?):

1) Look at the "Comparisons" section of the report. Look at the educational chart. Notice which groups have higher percentages of better-educated members and which groups have higher percentages of lesser-educated members.

2) Look at the "Income" section of the report. Notice which groups have more high-income members and which groups have more lower-income members.

I find it very interesting that Hindus and Jews come out on top of both of those charts by healthy margins. Sure, there are other unrelated social pressures that affect those numbers (for example, Indians who are here are most likely Hindu, and they are here in the U.S. working BECAUSE they have higher degrees). But there are other trends which are probably "more pure" (notice the educational levels of the Jehovah's Witnesses).

Very interesting study. I just wish it was organized better (it's obvious to me that a Protestant did it based on the breakdowns; for example, there is more than one kind of Catholic, and there are more than 3 groups of Hindus), that it sampled a larger portion of the population, and that it had some other data points to give a better overall picture.