Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Just The Facts, Ma'am

Here's an interview about statistics on Mormons and their lifestyle. I'm a big fan of statistics, so long as they are collected and analyzed in good faith, with as little bias as possible, and acknowledging what bias they might have. This fits that description.

The twenty-five-words-or-less version: Mormons are mostly just like everybody else, but they get married younger and have more babies.

I would also like to add that I would be curious to know if the suicide rate in Utah is higher than in the nation because we have a higher percentage of young people, who are statistically more likely to commit suicide. I know that Utah's got a much higher percentage of the population under the age of 18, and I wonder how much of the higher rate can be explained by demographics.