alt Hacker NewsLatter-day Saints are having fewer children. Church officials are taking note - https://www.npr.org/2025/10/31/nx-s1-5535654/latter-day-sain... - October 31st, 2025
> Dallin H. Oaks, the newly appointed prophet and president of the church, said that while birth rates within the church are higher than national numbers, they've still declined "significantly."
> Catholic University of America demographer Stephen Cranney crunched the numbers on the religion's families. In 2008, about 70% of Latter-day Saint women ages 18-45 had at least one child at home. In 2022, that number was 59%, a rate of decline mirrored in the American population at large.
Any uptick in birth rate in the US from first generation immigrants quickly reverts to the mean for subsequent generations.
The Fertility of Immigrants and Natives in the United States, 2023 - https://cis.org/Report/Fertility-Immigrants-and-Natives-Unit... - May 1st, 2025
Reproductive freedom (or rather, freedom from reproduction, and its costs and burdens) is culturally contagious.
"Latter-day Saints still have more children"
That study has 7 to 12% error ranges for the LDS group. Even with that, the share of LDS women with a child at home is 50% more than non-LDS. Lastly, there's a huge difference in rate of decay when a group is at, above, or below replacement rate. If everyone's declining, but they're declining far slower, that still proves my point that the composition of these communities in 80 years could be far different if current rates hold.