Ask American Mormons how often they go to church and roughly three quarters say they attend every week. Track where people actually go on Sundays, and the number drops to about 15%.
In 2024, University of Chicago economist Devin Pope used cell-phone location data from 2.1 million Americans to measure religious attendance based on behavior rather than self-report. Among Mormons, only about one in seven attended nearly every week.
We look at the enormous gap between reported Mormon church attendance and actual attendance, why people overreport religious behavior, and what Pope’s data shows about who is really sitting in those pews every Sunday.
Pope, D. G. (2024). Religious Worship Attendance in America: Evidence from Cellphone Data. Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Working Paper No. 2024-58. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4821716 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4821716