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Sorry if this seems like a stupid question/comment. I hear so many anti-Mormon types or others say that Utah has the highest rate of child abuse/divorce/welfare etc.. . Basically, I feel like they make these comments to discredit the Church. They never produce or tell me where they are getting their data from. My question is two part:
1. Am I the only person that notices this and finds it disingenuous? Am I totally off?
2. Is there a website or something that can prove that Utah has all these horrible issues?
On anothe note, I hope everyone who reads this is having a spectacular day!
Actually on some other scores, Utah does well e.g. in college education rates. But we get similar stuff here.
I have been able to find out that Utah has the highest rate of literacy in the United States. Maybe I should blame that on the Church too? ( I’m just kidding!) Utah may be a state with extremes. The highest or lowest in varying categories. I think the church does have an impact since it is a church of extremes. Based on my research over the years, Utah is not the highest/lowest on any of those categories. In fact, in those categories, it isn’t near either extreme. Going on memory only, Utah has:
A relatively high rate of paid online porn per capita – which might mean nothing more than members are unsophistacated about how to get it free and members and non-members alike pay for it more online than in other places because it’s hard to fine in print form in stores. Seriously, in some small towns, it’s impossible to find the staples of printed pornography – and there is a huge social stigma to buying it in print form.
A high rate of anti-depressant use – which I don’t find surprising, given the relative acceptance of medication for depression, the lack of self-medication options for members, the high number of children and resultant post-partum depression, the emphasis on happiness (which isn’t just a bad thing, in and of itself) and the widespread perfection complex culture (which is a bad thing, no matter how it’s spun).
A relatively high rate of plastic surgery per capita – but the numbers aren’t radically different and the surrounding states send lots of people to SLC for medical plastic surgery as a result of birth defects and physical trauma, and the figures don’t differentiate between cosmetic elective surgery and medically necessary plastic surgery.
One of the highest rates of literacy and college attendance – and educational level, overall. (for men AND women, interestingly, and the numbers are even higher when the oldest generations are removed)
The highest rate of bilingual fluency.
A low rate of GDP spent on education as a total amount – but the highest rate of GDP spent on education per child.
The highest rate of participation in musical programs and classes in junior and senior high school.
A relatively high per capita income. (That one surprised me, honestly.)
The highest rate of ice cream and Jello consumption.
Yeah, the negatives get lots of attention from people criticizing the Church, but the positives get ignored by those people – and there are just as many positives as negatives.
I had a play with a few search terms on Google trends (or whatever it’s called these days). Utah ranks highest on some ‘soft core’ terms like:
– nude pics
– topless girls
But lower on hard core terms
It also has the highest index on:
– porn addiction
There’s also the government stats website.
– Lowest rate of infant mortality… But… This is partly due to its lower (or lowest?) black population. For some reason black people have a higher infant mortality in USA. When you look among whites, utah ranks around middle on infant deaths. I wondered about this… Shouldn’t priesthood blessing be making a difference. Maybe that’s unrealistic an expectation.
– Also the lowest cancer death rate and (I think) the highest life expectancy.
Of interest… The LDS Church and Utah Statistics
http://fairlds.org/authors/scharffs-gilbert/the-truth-about-the-god-makers/xii The bilingual stat interested me. That strikes me as definitely LDS influenced. While immigrants and native Americans factor in on it, it’s obviously partly down to the old MTC…
Utah has the 4th highest rate of bankruptcy in the US. SLC Tribune. I had heard it had the highest… I’ve read in more than one source that the bankruptcy rate is due largely to how easy it is for creditors to take extreme measures like garnishing wages and other aggressive debt-collection steps. They can to those things much more quickly than in most other states, which leads people to file more quickly to avoid those types of steps. SamBee wrote:Of interest…
The LDS Church and Utah Statistics
http://fairlds.org/authors/scharffs-gilbert/the-truth-about-the-god-makers/xii The bilingual stat interested me. That strikes me as definitely LDS influenced. While immigrants and native Americans factor in on it, it’s obviously partly down to the old MTC…
Great link! Thanks.
All of these types of stats indicate a correlation, but you can’t necessarily conclude exactly why. As Ray pointed out on the highest number of paid porn subscriptions, is that because everyone’s a porn freak in repressed Utah or because they are so gol darn honest that they pay for it whereas everyone else is not “subscribing”? Quote:It also has the highest index on: – porn addiction
Or is it just that in Utah, if you look at porn you are considered addicted whereas everywhere else, if you look at porn, you are considered normal?
I read that Salt Lake City is the 4th in signing up for AshleyMadison.com (a site where adulterers can meet other adulterers to hook up). But another side to that is: 1) more in Utah marry vs. cohabitate, so more people qualify, and 2) the state’s population is younger. I don’t see Florida competing on this one unless grandmas and grandpas are still married and want to cheat on each other.
High in divorce? Yes, but the flip side is (as mentioned above), they are more likely to marry vs. cohabitate, and to marry young (which does correlate with divorce).
High in prescription drug usage, including anti-depressants? Yes. But that’s because unlike “normal” people, Mormons are more likely to go to a doctor with depression rather than a bar.
Old-Timer wrote:I’ve read in more than one source that the bankruptcy rate is due largely to how easy it is for creditors to take extreme measures like garnishing wages and other aggressive debt-collection steps. They can to those things much more quickly than in most other states, which leads people to file more quickly to avoid those types of steps.
I’ve also wondered if part of the reason is that Utah is one of 12 non-recourse states, so presumably there are fewer incentives to avoid bankruptcy.
As hawkgrrrl has shown, data behind data behind data has an effect. These kinds of stats are boiled down to one-liners that don’t mean much… it’s like studies that show that you are 1% less likely to be struck by a meteorite if you eat garlic… suddenly everyone is checking to make sure there are garlic cloves in their refrigerators… yet your odds of getting struck by a meteorite are so slim that 1% is inconsequential. Put another way… I once was considering taking a job in a certain city. The employer sent me a packet about the area. One thing I specifically remember was the large number of golf courses for a town of that size. I was really impressed by that, and assumed that I’d have to drive a golf cart to work and watch for stray golf balls on every picnic. When I moved there, though, it became apparent that there were no more golf courses than anywhere else I had lived, except that there was a country club. Now, I couldn’t afford to go to the country club, so it had zero impact on my life. Yet, the presence of a country club in this relatively small town, tipped the golf-courses-per-capita in a way that made it appear on paper to be something that it wasn’t in reality.
Here’s a new one: Utah in the top 5 of happiest states:
http://www.webmd.com/healthy-aging/news/20120228/top-5-happiest-states-in-the-us You know, Utah just has the highest Internet usage and saturation rate, anyway (per capita) so it kind of follows that with more internet usage come more people using it to look at the porn they’d have bought anyway. http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/politics/52881411-90/broadband-companies-homes-internet.html.csp
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