Introduction

How many children under eight years of age were regularly brought to religious services in 1995? What were their main characteristics - of child, parents, and home? How many and what proportion of the same children attend religious services ten years later, when they were aged ten to 17? What were their main characteristics in 2005? Specifically, what proportions were affiliated with the main religious denominations?

These are the kinds of questions that can be answered by the estimates appearing in the two tables of Appendix 2. Each table has three sections, number of children, percentage of the row total, and percentage of the column total, which is the total number of children. Within each section one finds 13 pages of tables, nine of the characteristics of children in 1995, three of their characteristics in 2005, and one of their characteristics in either 1995 or 2005. The source of the estimates is Statistics Canada’s National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth. This survey and its questions are described in Appendix 1.

How the estimates may be put together is illustrated in the following set of charts. There are many other ways of organizing the results, but this one reveals some expected and surprising insights. In this section we have focused on the weekly attendees, children present at religious services at least once a week in the preceding year.