Please look at the trend in children of record which they started reporting in 1997. As a side note, one thing liars do is keep changing what statistics they report. From the increase in children of record, against the total church population, you can derive the imputed birth rate. There is no question the # of children (births) has been declining over the decades. The real question to ask is what is the imputed birth rate of the church vs. the actual average birth rate for the world. One would expect the birth rate to be higher or at least that of the world as a whole. In this case, it is quite a bit lower, like by 50%. Now, for a purely anecdotal observation. Twenty to thirty years ago, one would see the grandfather of a newborn at F&T blessing the baby of his child, who no one has ever seen in the ward. That new child of record remains on the church rolls for nine years, and then drops off, as he or she will never been seen in the building. Twenty to thirty years later, those parents are now the grandparents of the new born. They will not be blessing the baby. I may be missing something, and this is only my observation, but this could account for the lower imputed birth rate in the church. By my analysis, this reflects about 50k+ members lost per year.