Rural and Growing, Growing, Growing! A Big Data Analysis of the Amish Population

Amish produce household directories for specific Amish settlements or states with many small settlements. These directories are a wealth of demographic information, although managing to get these data into a useful format is a... [ view full abstract ]

Amish produce household directories for specific Amish settlements or states with many small settlements. These directories are a wealth of demographic information, although managing to get these data into a useful format is a significant task. In this presentation, we describe the work of the Amish Population Research Group this past year in accumulating Amish directories from 2011 to 2017 and entering the data into a database. Methods include both manual entry and computer programming. Over 55,000 households were entered into the database thus far. Using this massive database, we undertake an unprecedented demographic analysis of the Amish population, including fertility rates, marriage rates, child spacing, and fertility span. Not only do we update now quite old figures from prior studies, but we expand our analysis beyond just one given settlement to the near entirety of the Amish in North America. Tracking demographic trends is important, as the Amish continue to demonstrate a rapid growth pattern. We further discuss some of the future potential beyond descriptive statistics for this database. We offer updated findings from this big data project.