{"id":1320,"date":"2024-06-29T00:14:18","date_gmt":"2024-06-29T00:14:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/?p=1320"},"modified":"2024-06-30T12:20:37","modified_gmt":"2024-06-30T12:20:37","slug":"have-the-nones-leveled-off","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/29\/have-the-nones-leveled-off\/","title":{"rendered":"Have the Nones Leveled Off?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last month Ryan Burge published “The Nones Have Hit a Ceiling<\/a>“, using data from the 2023 Cooperative Election Study to show that the increase in the number of Americans with no religious affiliation has hit a plateau. Comparing the number of Atheists, Agnostics, and “Nothing in Particular” between 2020 and 2023, he found that “the share of non-religious Americans has stopped rising in any meaningful way.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I read that, I was frustrated that the HERI Freshman Survey had not published new data since 2019. I’ve been following the rise of the “Nones” in that dataset since one of my first blog articles<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As you might guess, the Freshman Survey reports data from incoming college students. Of course, college students are not a representative sample of the U.S. population, and as rates of college attendance have increased, they represent a different slice of the population over time. Nevertheless, surveying young adults over a long interval provides an early view of trends in the general population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, I have good news! I got a notification today that HERI has published data tables for the 2020 through 2023 surveys. They are in PDF, so I had to do some manual data entry, but I have results!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Religious preference<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Among other questions, the Freshman Survey asks students to select their \u201ccurrent religious preference\u201d from a list of seventeen common religions, \u201cOther religion,\u201d \u201cAtheist\u201d, \u201cAgnostic\u201d, or \u201cNone.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The options \u201cAtheist\u201d and \u201cAgnostic\u201d were added in 2015.  For consistency over time, I compare the \u201cNones\u201d from previous years with the sum of \u201cNone\u201d, \u201cAtheist\u201d and \u201cAgnostic\u201d since 2015.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following figure shows the fraction of Nones from 1969, when the question was added, to 2023, the most recent data available.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The blue line shows data until 2015; the orange line shows data from 2015 through 2019. The gray line shows a quadratic fit.  The light gray region shows a 95% predictive interval.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The quadratic model continues to fit the data well and the recent trend is still increasing<\/strong>, but if you look at only the last few data points, there is some evidence that the rate of increase is slowing<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But not for women<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Now here’s where things get interesting. Until recently, female students have been consistently more religious than male students. But that might be changing. The following figure shows the percentages of Nones for male and female students (with a missing point in 2018, when this breakdown was not available).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Since 2019, the percentage of Nones has increased for women and decreased for men<\/strong>, and it looks like women may now be less religious. So the apparent slowdown in the overall trend might be a mix of opposite trends in the two groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following graph shows the gender gap over time, that is, the difference in percentages of male and female students with no religious affiliation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The gap was essentially unchanged from 1990 to 2020. But in the last three years it has changed drastically. It now falls outside the predictive range based on past data, which suggests a change this large would be unlikely by chance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Similarly with attendance at religious services, the gender gap has closed and possibly reversed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

UPDATE: Ryan Burge looked at the gender gap in CES and GSS data<\/a> and found similar results: especially among young people, the gender gap has either disappeared or crossed over. And Ryan pointed me to this article by Dan Cox and Kelsey Eyre Hammond<\/a> which reports similar trends in data from the Survey Center on American Life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Attendance<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The survey also asks students how often they \u201cattended a religious service\u201d in the last year. The choices are \u201cFrequently,\u201d \u201cOccasionally,\u201d and \u201cNot at all.\u201d Respondents are instructed to select \u201cOccasionally\u201d if they attended one or more times, so a wedding or a funeral would do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following figure shows the fraction of students who reported any religious attendance in the last year, starting in 1968. I discarded a data point from 1966 that seems unlikely to be correct.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There is a clear dip in 2021, likely due to the pandemic, but the last two data points have returned to the long-term trend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Data Source<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The data reported here are available from the HERI publications page<\/a>. Since I entered the data manually from PDF documents, it’s possible I have made errors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last month Ryan Burge published “The Nones Have Hit a Ceiling“, using data from the 2023 Cooperative Election Study to show that the increase in the number of Americans with no religious affiliation has hit a plateau. Comparing the number of Atheists, Agnostics, and “Nothing in Particular” between 2020 and 2023, he found that “the share of non-religious Americans has stopped rising in any meaningful way.” When I read that, I was frustrated that the HERI Freshman Survey had not…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nHave the Nones Leveled Off? - Probably Overthinking It<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2024\/06\/29\/have-the-nones-leveled-off\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Have the Nones Leveled Off? - Probably Overthinking It\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Last month Ryan Burge published “The Nones Have Hit a Ceiling“, using data from the 2023 Cooperative Election Study to show that the increase in the number of Americans with no religious affiliation has hit a plateau. 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The fraction who say they have no religious affiliation tripled, from about 10% to 30%. 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The fraction who say they have no religious affiliation tripled, from about 10% to 30%. And the fraction who say they have attended a religious service in the last year fell from 85% to 70%. I've been following\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"college\"","block_context":{"text":"college","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/tag\/college\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/heri18.1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/heri18.1.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/heri18.1.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/heri18.1.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/heri18.1.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/heri18.1.png?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":521,"url":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2021\/01\/18\/college-freshmen-are-more-godless-than-ever\/","url_meta":{"origin":1320,"position":2},"title":"College Freshmen are More Godless Than Ever","author":"AllenDowney","date":"January 18, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"In the last 30 years, college students have become much less religious. The fraction who say they have no religious affiliation has more than tripled, from about 10% to 34%. And the fraction who say they have attended a religious service in the last year fell from more than 85%\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"atheism\"","block_context":{"text":"atheism","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/tag\/atheism\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/heri.2.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1756,"url":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2026\/03\/30\/have-the-nones-hit-a-ceiling\/","url_meta":{"origin":1320,"position":3},"title":"Have the Nones hit a ceiling?","author":"AllenDowney","date":"March 30, 2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Someone asked me recently why I stopped writing about religion, and I said there were two reasons: One is that the primary dataset I was following stopped updating; the other is that Ryan Burge is doing such a good job, I felt redundant. His most recent article presents evidence that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"bayesian statistics\"","block_context":{"text":"bayesian statistics","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/tag\/bayesian-statistics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/cohort_trajectory_re-2dd48c8df781b26e84647025ea5891b6.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/cohort_trajectory_re-2dd48c8df781b26e84647025ea5891b6.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/cohort_trajectory_re-2dd48c8df781b26e84647025ea5891b6.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/cohort_trajectory_re-2dd48c8df781b26e84647025ea5891b6.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/cohort_trajectory_re-2dd48c8df781b26e84647025ea5891b6.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]},{"id":765,"url":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/27\/the-plurality-of-the-nones\/","url_meta":{"origin":1320,"position":4},"title":"The Plurality of the Nones","author":"AllenDowney","date":"August 27, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Some time in the next 10-15 years, the most common religion in the United States will be \"none\". Data from the General Social Survey In this figure, the solid lines show estimated proportions of each religious affiliation from 1972 to 2021. Since the early 1990s, the proportion of Protestants has\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/affiliation_year_2021.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/affiliation_year_2021.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/affiliation_year_2021.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/affiliation_year_2021.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/affiliation_year_2021.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/08\/affiliation_year_2021.png?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":394,"url":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/2020\/01\/07\/a-large-majority-of-americans-support-legal-abortion-at-least-in-some-circumstances\/","url_meta":{"origin":1320,"position":5},"title":"A large majority of Americans support legal abortion, at least in some circumstances","author":"AllenDowney","date":"January 7, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the third in a series of articles where I use data from the General Social Survey (GSS) to explore Differences in beliefs and attitudes between Christians and people with no religious affiliation (\"Nones\"),Generational differences between younger and older Christians, andGenerational differences between younger and older Nones. In the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"abortion\"","block_context":{"text":"abortion","link":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/tag\/abortion\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/generation4.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/generation4.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/generation4.png?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/generation4.png?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/generation4.png?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1320"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1331,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1320\/revisions\/1331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.allendowney.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}