Featured Post
How Individual Decisions Shape Religious Groups Over Time
Modeling religious change with agent-based models Societies are comprised of diverse individuals, each one characterized by their own goals, relationships, and personality. Modeling Religious Change uses
Articles
Forging New Directions in the Demographics of Religion
Modeling Religious Change combines demography, the scientific study of religion, and computational models to create simulations of religious change in the USA, Norway, and India. Our research tackles the challenge of creating more accurate projections of religious change in populations by taking account of multiple dimensions of religiosity. Building on our previous projects and traditional methods of creating religious projections, we have
Defining the Dimensions of Religiosity
Written by Jessie Saeli, Edited by Nicole R. Smith and Rachel J. Bacon What does it mean to be religious? Is someone religious because they go to Mass every week or because they pray facing Mecca five times a day? Is it because they eat a vegetarian diet or because they
2020 Religious Census
By Yujia Huo / October 4, 2023 According to the 2020 U.S. Religion Census, there are 356,739 religious congregations in the United States, comprised of 161 million people (48.6% of the population). A congregation is a group of persons who meet together regularly for worship. In different religious groups this can mean parishes, churches,
A Changing Population in Norway
We used world population data from the United Nations to create this population pyramid of Norway from 1950 projected to 2100. Our key takeaways? transition from expansive to stationary population lowering fertility rates increasing life expectancy https://youtu.be/iXc-Ild56PQ?feature=shared This animation visualizes the “demographic transition” predicted to occur this century. Demographic transition
Understanding Changing Populations with the Cohort-Component Method
Photo by Cosmin Serban on Unsplash When governments set out to design long-term projects and plans, they need to know how many people those future projects must accommodate. Many turn to demographic projections to provide data on future population sizes and make-up. The cohort-component method (CCM) is commonly used by the government and academia to create these
Adapting Cohort-Component Methods to a Microsimulation: A Case Study
Ivan Puga-Gonzalez, Rachel J. Bacon, David Voas, F. LeRon Shults, George Hodulik, Wesley J. Wildman Abstract Social scientists generally take United Nations (UN) population projections as the baseline when considering the potential impact of any changes that could affect fertility, mortality or migration, and the UN typically does projections using the cohort-component method (CCM). The