[Buddha-l] Education and religious affiliation

[Richard Hayes]

Denizens,

Some time ago James Coleman made the claim that Buddhists are probably the
most highly educated religious group in  the United States. (I guess he had
never heard of Jews.) His data were highly suspect, since he seems to have
surveyed only non-Asian Buddhists. So what he was really talking about were
Americans of European and African ancestry who had adopted Buddhism as
adults. (On the H-BUDDHISM list a few weeks ago there was a discussion of
the unreliable data that Pew had published on the Buddhist population of the
United States; the criticism of those data was that they were collected by
interviews conducted in English and Spanish and therefore presumably missed
hordes of Asians who speak neither of those two languages.)

The Pew Foundation recently published a variety of statistics on a variety
of religious affiliations found in the United States. According to their
findings, Buddhists (which show that 32% of Buddhists polled were of Asian
ethnicity) were not the most highly educated religious denomination in the
USA. Here is a list of denominations surveyed, along with the percentage of
people claiming to belong to those denominations with bachelors or
post-graduate degrees.

Jewish                        79% (Combines reform and conservative)
Hindu                          74%
Unitarian                    51%
Buddhist                    48%
Orthodox Christian  46%
Agnostic                     43%
Atheist                         42%
Mainline Protestant   34%
Mormon                       28%
Catholic                       26%
Muslim                         24%
Evangelical Protestant 20%
Jehovah Witness          9%

None of these statistics surprised me much; I thought the number of
Unitarians with college degrees might be higher than it is. And perhaps I
learned that my views on what average Muslims are like has been skewed by
the fact that 95% of the Muslims I happen to know are highly educated and
may not be representative.

What did surprise me a little bit was the high percentage of Buddhists who
make less than $30,000 a year (25%) and the percentage who make more than
%100,000 a year (22%). In contrast, Orthodox Christians, who have about the
same educational levels, have 20% and 28% in those respective income levels.
Not surprisingly, the more highly educated Jews have 14% and 46% at those
two levels.

Here are some other statistics about American Buddhists that caught my eye.
I report the category with the largest percentage under each statistical
heading: 40% are aged 30-49; 53% are male; 45% are married; 70% have no
children. (Ever wondered why Buddhism has no future in America?)

Vanity required that I determine how typical I am of an American Buddhist.
Not very, it turns out. I'm among the 30% between 50 and 64 (I turned 63
today!). I'm also among the 53% male, the 53% white, the 17% who make
between $50-75K, the 26% with a post-graduate degree, the 45% married and
the 11% with two children. Aside from being a married white male, I'm in the
minority in most categories. No wonder so many of the denizens of Buddha-L
disagree with me on just about everything.

If you want to see how typical YOU are, go to
http://religions.pewforum.org/portraits

I might as well announce it here first: I have decided not to run for
President of the United States this year.

-- 
Richard Hayes (Dayamati)
http://dayamati.home.comcast.net
http://dayamati.blogspot.com