placestats

People per tax return and Evangelical Protestant adherents

A county is not a congregation. Counties where more people are counted as adherents (members of a religious group) also tend to differ on the other measure, and that is all. It does not follow that the adherents are the people with the different score. Making that leap is called the ecological fallacy: reading a pattern across places as a fact about individual people. It is as easy to fall into here as with the voting pairs. Two things about the counting matter too. Adherents are counted where their congregation meets, not where they live, so thirty very small counties exceed 100%. And a denomination that did not report is missing, not zero. That undercounts membership most where churches are least formally organised.

Where People per tax return is higher, Evangelical Protestant adherents tends to be higher. The link is weak: +0.31 across 3,121 counties, on a scale from −1 (opposite) to +1 (in step). That figure compares places with the same population density, income and education, so those differences can't explain it. It holds inside states too. Measured separately within each of 40 states, the middle value of the link is +0.11.

Holds after adjusting

Every place, plotted

One dot for each place reporting both measures. Hover over or tap a dot to see its name and values. The thin line is the straight line that best fits the dots. The bold line, shown for counties, is the link after adjusting for density, income and education. A dot far from the lines is a place that does not follow the pattern.

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What each measure is

People per tax return

People covered per tax return: household size as the tax system sees it.

IRS Statistics of Income · IRS SOI N2 / N1

Evangelical Protestant adherents

Members of evangelical Protestant churches, such as Southern Baptist, Assemblies of God, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod and about two hundred others, as a share of the population.

· Religion Census EVANRATE (2010, 2020)

Highest and lowest

Where each measure is highest and lowest among the places reporting both (2023), with the other measure beside it. This is shown for every size of place where both are published. Metro-area values are added up from their counties. A measure that cannot be added up across counties, such as a middle value (median), has no metro figure. Counts are shown per 1,000 residents, since raw totals would only list the largest places. Cities and towns and ZIP codes are shown where the Census survey or the CDC publishes them; most other sources stop at the county. They are shown for places of 5,000 residents or more, and only where the survey’s margin of error is small enough for the figure to be usable. The CDC publishes its health estimates for cities in a version adjusted for age, so places with older or younger people can be compared fairly, but not for ZIP codes.

Counties

By people per tax return

People per tax returnEvangelical Protestant adherents
Highest
Jefferson County, ID21.13
Gaines County, TX230.9
Buffalo County, SD20
Sterling County, TX237.5
Juab County, UT20
Lowest
New York County, NY14.99
Suffolk County, MA15.16
Pitkin County, CO27.11
San Juan County, CO22.27
District of Columbia, DC215.3

By evangelical Protestant adherents

People per tax returnEvangelical Protestant adherents
Highest
King County, TX2452
Harmon County, OK2147
Kiowa County, CO2147
Worth County, MO2140
Edmonson County, KY2129
Lowest
Gilpin County, CO20
Clear Creek County, CO20
Alpine County, CA20
Lake and Peninsula Borough, AK20
Grand Isle County, VT20
States

By people per tax return

People per tax returnEvangelical Protestant adherents
Highest
Utah22.03
Idaho212.4
Oklahoma241.9
Texas223.5
Arkansas238.3
Lowest
District of Columbia215.3
Rhode Island23.83
Vermont27.25
Massachusetts23.65
Maine26.1

By evangelical Protestant adherents

People per tax returnEvangelical Protestant adherents
Highest
Alabama242.1
Oklahoma241.9
Mississippi239
Arkansas238.3
Tennessee236.3
Lowest
Utah22.03
Massachusetts23.65
Rhode Island23.83
New Hampshire24.84
New Jersey25.1
Metro areas

By people per tax return

People per tax returnEvangelical Protestant adherents
Highest
Andrews, TX242.8
Provo-Orem-Lehi, UT20.373
Vernal, UT23.77
Eagle Pass, TX25.94
Blackfoot, ID22.56
Lowest
Nantucket, MA21.54
Breckenridge, CO26.51
Vineyard Haven, MA21.19
Barnstable Town, MA22.6
Taos, NM22.74

By evangelical Protestant adherents

People per tax returnEvangelical Protestant adherents
Highest
Middlesborough, KY276.4
Camden, AR270.8
Vernon, TX268.1
Durant, OK264.6
Gadsden, AL264.5
Lowest
Provo-Orem-Lehi, UT20.373
Heber, UT20.702
Amherst Town-Northampton, MA20.82
Vineyard Haven, MA21.19
Rexburg, ID21.21

Counties furthest from the pattern

Compared with the straight line that best fits all 3,143 counties: the five with far more evangelical Protestant adherents than their people per tax return would suggest, and the five with far less.

People per tax returnEvangelical Protestant adherents
Above the line
King County, TX2452
Kiowa County, CO2147
Worth County, MO2140
Harmon County, OK2147
Edmonson County, KY2129
Below the line
Jefferson County, ID21.13
Buffalo County, SD20
Juab County, UT20
Morgan County, UT20.72
Franklin County, ID21.65

Two series, one county

Both measures over time for a county you pick. The two charts are stacked, so they share only the years along the bottom. You can pick from the thirty largest counties reporting both. This panel covers 2010–2024, and a measure published only once shows as a single dot.

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Every version of the link

Each row measures the same link, from −1 to +1, in a different way. If the rows mostly agree, the link does not depend on one choice of method.

Before adjusting for anything+0.3423,121 counties reporting both
After adjusting for density, income and education+0.312the part of the link that is not just how urban, rich and educated a place is
Also adjusting for population size+0.317size taken out as well as density
Also comparing only within each state+0.073each county is compared only with others in its own state, so this is no longer a comparison between states
Giving bigger counties more weight+0.359the adjusted link for the average resident rather than the average county. With this weighting, the data counts for about 287 equally weighted counties
Middle value inside single states+0.107the link worked out inside each of 40 states with at least 20 counties reporting
Using ranks, after adjusting+0.352uses each county’s rank, not its value, so a few extreme counties cannot create the link

How much to believe it

Could it be chance?

The p-value is the chance of seeing a link this strong if there were really none. A value of 0.05 or less means the link is unlikely to be chance. Very small values are written in short form: 3.1e-16 means 0.00000000000000031, and the bigger the number after “e-”, the smaller the value. Treating every county as a separate case gives p = 2.7e-71. But counties in the same state tend to resemble each other, so the better figure allows for that: p = 2.8e-5. The site tested 20,910 pairs, and testing so many turns up some flukes. The q-value allows for that too. For this pair it is 1.8e-70.

Do nearby places look alike?

Moran’s I measures how much nearby places look alike: 0 means no map pattern, and higher means neighbours are more similar. For the part of each county that the adjustment leaves unexplained, it is +0.42 (p = 0.001). That unexplained part still clusters on the map. So some regional factor shared by both measures is not accounted for.

Did they change together?

Not measurable: at least one of these is published for too few of the years a change needs (2014–2019 or 2019–2023), or for too few counties in both.

Related pairs

Association only. Nothing here shows that either measure changes the other. This describes counties, not the people in them. Two measures going together across places does not mean the same people have both. How the US county data works · Explore People per tax return and Evangelical Protestant adherents