However, for anyone that does not believe in Armageddon, it is a sure sign that the Watchtower is loosing losing its relevance with the general population.
Did the Watchtower really ever have any relevance with the general population?
Watchtower Growth by CONTINENT and other Statistical Gems
by jwfacts 42 Replies latest watchtower bible
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Jeffro
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slimboyfat
Once all the things that artificially inflate the figures are taken out there may well be a decline.
I think the Canadian census results already show a decline in people self-identifying as JWs contrary to the Watchtower's own rising statistics in the country. It would be interesting to see if that trend is repeated elsewhere. Unfortunately the census results in the UK are useless for this purpose however because it asks such a vague question on religion that is gives no reliable picture of JW membership.
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outsmartthesystem
"This is not a good situation, and it seems the Watchtower is a victim of its own success. Growth is occurring, and will continue to occur, in poor areas, adding to the Watchtower’s growing financial difficulties."
Paul, I've followed your statistical analysis very closely (not just this one) and still cannot thank you enough for all the work you've done. But there is still a question that nags at me. And that is.....growing financial difficulties or not......how much cash is the society sitting on? We know their revenues have been at least a Billion$ for a decade.....maybe two? For over a hundred years they've been very frugal. They've gotten 100 years worth of free labor out of tens if not hundreds of thousands of people. Do you think it is possible that they could be sitting in a cash pile that would even make our jaws drop? Do you think it is possible they could be sitting on $20billion? If so....invested at a safe 5%....they would be looking at a return of $1billion per year without even touching the principle. Now I know $20bil is a big number.....but it wouldn't even have to be that high. Suppose they have less of a stockpile......they notice the downward trent in cash flow......they sell off their Brooklyn properties......scale back staffing......kick all the expensive old missionaries and overseers to the curb........cut back on magazine production.....etc etc. Is it possible that they have enough $......stockpiled right now.......to survive indefinitely?
Take me for example. If you gave me $1million today, I would keep working. I would live off the $ I make from work and watch my stockpile (interest) grow. After 20 years at a safe 5% interest...my initial $1mil is now $2.6mil. But 20 years from now....suddenly I can't work. I lose all that income I had from working. But no worries. I scale back. I buy a cheaper car. I go on vacation 1x per year instead of 2x. I go out to eat less. Now I can live on the interest generated from my $2.6mil with no income from work and without ever touching the principle. I can survive indefinitely because of my big stockpile......even though future earnings aside from that stockpile have dried up.
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slimboyfat
Are the banks in the US giving 5% interest at the moment? 5% is not all that easy to come by in the UK with interest rates rock bottom.
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steve2
Like Canada, New Zealand census figures during the 1990s to 2000s actually showed a decline in the number of citizens identifying as JWs. Usually census figures over-report the number of JWs because it also includes those who are inactive but still consider themselves JWs; it also includes infants and older people in residentrial facilities and yes, even prisons. I do not have the figures on hand, but it was a surprising about turn after decades of showing more professed JWs than were reported in the Watchtower's own annual statistics.
Some "facts" seem incontrovertible in Western countries: Reports indicate the prime source of growth is born-ins whereas in earlier decades the prime source was people converted in the door-to-door. The most powerful example of that change is the huge in-swell of baptisms of newly contacted people in the years leading up to 1975. Secondly, it takes less effort to still be an active JW. Thirdly, the validity of self-reported publishing hours is probably over-estimated. I note the Watchtower has never officially questioned publishers hours - yet many of us have anecdotal evidence that those hours are often downright incorrect.
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St George of England
Very interesting indeed, needless to say we no longer analyse the figures during the WT study in January!
Just one question, what happened to the population of Europe? YB 2011 and 2012 both show 47 countries but the population for 2011 YB is 739,193,855 and the population for the 2012 YB is down to 736,505,919, a drop of 2,687,936.
Have I missed something?
George
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jwfacts
St George - The 2011 YB population figures are wrong, and globally were overstated by about 400,000,000. I don't know how the Holy Spirit let that one slip through.
outsmartthesystem - I do not think they are sitting on huge reserves. My father did the audit for the Aust branch between about 1991 and 2011 and when I asked about things like the reason for the private and public editions of the magazines he always said it was for cost cutting reasons. For many years it has been required for donations from the USA to be sent overseas to assist with branches in poorer countries, so poorer countries are a financial drain on the global work. The costs of printing the huge amounts of literature they print is substantial and now that they do not have guaranteed revenue for the literature it will not take much for costs to blow out with detrimental effects.
fatboyslim - I have included a graph of people identifying as JWs in Australia from 3 censuses. The latest census was 2011, so it will be interesting to update it with those figures, since there has been some reported growth in Australia in the last 2 years. As mentioned, the census figure is higher than the reported figure, as it included minors and people that do not preach but identify as JWs. However, the interesting thing is that the numbers in the census dropped in 2006 even though the Watchtower reported growth.
Watchtower Aust Average publishers
1996 60216
2001 58993
2006 60692
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slimboyfat
jwfacts (Paul?) that's interesting on the Australian census results.
Do you know if the question on religion was exactly the same for each census? And do you know if the Watchtower Society in Australia issued any guidance to Witnesses on how/whether they should fill out the religion section of their return? Either of those factors (and maybe others?) could have impacted the figures so might be worth investigating.
I have read for example that the Mormons had a special campaign to contact inactive Mormons in Mexico to encourage them to self-itentify as Mormons. Despite those efforts the census revealed that fewer than a quarter of the people the Mormon church counted as members identified themselves as such on the census form. One can reasonably conclude that without the special campaign that even fewer would have identified themselves as Mormons. In contrast to that more people self-identified as JWs in Mexico than is claimed in the official publisher count.
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jwfacts
Slimboyfat - Yes, it is Paul. I had a look and the question was the same. They added a couple of extra main religions with check boxes along the way, but for each of the above religions you had to write your religion. The actual question is "what is the person's religion?" and the question is optional.
In the 1991 census, not included in the graphs above, the format was different as there were no predefined religions and so each religion had to be hand written.
Unusually, in the 1986 census they note that under the totals for Jehovah's Witness they included about 10 groups including Bible Students, Russellians and International Bible Student Association. It also gives a breakdown by age. 20,000 of the 71,000 JWs at the time were 0-14. Since most of those were not publishers, that brings the total publishers to 50,000, which is very close to the figures reported by the Watcthower.
On a fair playing field, I think JW memorial attendance would be more comparable with Mormon figures. The Watchtower is very conservative in how they quote members in comparison to other religions. However, since they have retained the same methodologies, I think a comparison of the trends between religions is applicable.
There is an amazing amount of information on Australian site abs.gov.au with the census data all the way back to 1911. At the time there were only about 30 Bible Students and 2000 Seventh Day Adventists.
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steve2
Watchtower Aust Average publishers
1996 60216
2001 58993
2006 60692
I shouldn't be surprised but am: So if I'm reading this correctly, that means the average number of publishers in Australia increased just by 476 in a 10-year period! That's got to augur poorly for future growth of this "nonthriving" organization!
