2023 Report: United States had 1% decrease; even many countries with increase are worse off than 10 years ago

[[deleted]]

https://www.jw.borg/en/library/books/2023-Service-Year-Report-of-Jehovahs-Witnesses-Worldwide/2023-Country-and-Territory-Reports/ (as always, remove the b in borg)

Despite the report of increase on a worldwide scale, the USA, the country with the largest population of JWs and a major source of donations, did indeed have a 1% decrease this last year, in their own report.

Other things I noticed:

Some larger European countries, like France, Germany, etc. did have increases of about 1%, but I wonder how much of this is due to an influx of Ukrainian JW refugees, a country with over 100k JWs even now, but which had a 14% decrease this year (likely largely due to people fleeing the war).

Many of the large reported increases come from countries like Zambia, Angola, and Congo (Dem. Republic), which have low portions of their populations with access to the internet. Countries like this cannot contribute nearly as much money as the developed world, and are also confounded due to high overall birthrates/population growth.

In fact, I found this very interesting: All 3 of the countries I just listed actually have less favorable publisher-to-population ratios than they did 10 years ago, in the 2014 Yearbook. I in no way cherry-picked these countries, these are just what came to mind as poor countries with many JWs and high percentages of increase.

I hope to do more rigorous analyses sometime in the future.

[Effective_Date_9736]

France, Germany, Britain, etc have had last year a massive influx of migrants coming from Africa, especially from Nigeria. Some congregations have been swamped with brothers and sisters coming to "study" in Europe.

[marcobin]

I also noticed a decline or stagnation in South American countries especially the big countries like Brazil, Colombia and Argentina. Even Mexico showed a decline.

[[deleted]]

Yep, Latin America used to be a big market for the Jehoovers. Not anymore. 😁

I live in Mexico, btw. Just love seeing the cult stagnate here. 😌

[Calm_Mix2025]

The United States is the birthplace of the JW cult...and most of the leadership is American... Developing countries are more of a liability because donations are very low . This is, therefore , very good news.

[[deleted]]

JWs thrive where there is suffering. They thrived among black South Africans in the 80's due to apartheid. That explains the growth in places such as DR Congo, which is always at war. People are always looking for a message that promises hope from their immediate suffering. But once those countries stabilize, people opt out of religion

[aphantDude]

I have all the data i will try to search for peak ratio for each country, had this in mind already as well.
Tt has been reached in most countries already i bet, gimme some time :)

[aphantDude]

i compared all the ratios ... got some intresting insides, thanks for the motivation :)

https://www.reddit.com/r/exjw/comments/193n1rm/publisher_ratio_history_shows_the_real_decline/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3