A recent survey shows that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have a higher percentage of married couples and have more children than most other religions in the United States.

About 35,000 Americans ages 18 and older participated by interview in the U.S. Religious Landscape Survey conducted by the Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life.

Latter-day Saints came in second with having the highest percent married of the religions of the U.S. with 71 percent of Latter-day Saints saying they are married. Hindus came in first with 78 percent married. Of these marriages, 90 percent of Hindus were married to someone of the same religion, again followed by Latter-day Saints with 83 percent.

Doug Brinley, a professor of Church History and specialist in marriage and family relations, said the findings are not surprising because Latter-day Saints have grown up with the idea of marriage.

"The highest ordinance of the gospel is temple marriage," Brinley said. "It's pretty engrained into our mentality."

Brinley said marriage is tied closely with theology. He said he suspects the percent of married Latter-day Saints would be higher if the researcher started the age at 21, when male missionaries return from missions, instead of 18 when they are preparing to go.

Also in the survey, more than 1 in 5 Latter-day Saint adults have three or more children, along with approximately 15 percent of Muslims.

The two eastern religions of Hinduism and Islam are similar to Latter-day Saints in the high percentages dealing with families.

Jeffrey Chadwick, also a professor of Church History at BYU, said Hindus and Muslims come from traditional societies.

"Muslims place a high regard on families as do Hindus," Chadwick said.

Much of the western world has gone through a sexual revolution and abandoned traditional values Chadwick said. Many eastern cultures have not.

"Both of these [percentages] come about because of socially conservative views, which tend to buck the views of western philosophies," Chadwick said.

He said Mormons will find that the people with family values most similar are those that come from more traditional societies, such as the Middle-East and India.

The U.S. Religious Landscape Survey also details the average income, education, ethnicity composition, and age of most American religions.

Latter-day Saints had the highest percentage of members that have some college education, which was 33 percent. However, church members fell below other religions in percentages of college graduates and post-graduate education.

Hindus and Jews topped the survey in religions that receive post-graduate education and a higher income.

Chadwick said this might be because many of these Jews and Hindus have come to the United States specifically to receive a better education. The numbers might not be representative of the religion as a whole, he said.

Copyright Brigham Young University 6 Mar 2008