Doubling Time and Population Increase of the Amish
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Date
2015
Authors
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Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Ohio State University. Libraries
Abstract
Current estimates of Amish population growth often cite a “doubling time” figure, but fail to
substantiate the source from which the estimate was derived. As well, some estimates of
population increase, such as by the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at
Elizabethtown College, use net change in the number of church districts as a proxy to determine
population change, rather than a more precise counting up of children and adults. Unfortunately,
a direct “head count” of the Amish, and changes in this count overtime to create a doubling time
estimate, would be very daunting, Until there is a valid database from which this can be
accomplished, an alternative is to calculate doubling time based on net change in the number of
households in various Amish settlements from one year to the next. In this article, end-of-year
statistics submitted by scribes from hundreds of Amish settlements to a monthly periodical
known as The Diary are used to estimate doubling time. Five time periods, each representing
consecutive years from 2009 through 2014 for which the number of households for the same
settlement is reported, are used to create a doubling time estimate. Altogether, there were 673
data-points for which consecutive year information about the same settlement was available. The
article discusses possible limitations to using The Diary and households to calculate a doubling
time, as well as the possible uses of an accurate doubling time estimate for research and
application.
Description
Keywords
Doubling time, Migration, Population increase, The Diary, Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies
Citation
Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies v. 3, no. 1 (2015), p. 94-109.