Source: Ohio Amish Country: 2024 Map and Visitor’s
Guide, https:// www.visitamishcountry.com/
sites/default/files/2024-01/
The Amish’s high fertility, communal practices, and lifestyles are coming together to fuel upward mobility and economic flourishing, according to recent articles and research. Aaron Renn’s newsletter (November 1) cites a Wall Street Journal article reporting on how Holmes County, Ohio, a bastion of the Amish, has become a standout for economic mobility among millennials. Between 2005 and 2019, average household income in Holmes County rose 24 percent for 27-year-olds raised in lower-income homes—the biggest relative jump for any U.S. county—from roughly $36,000 to $45,000 in inflation-adjusted 2023 dollars. That puts millennials who are now in their early 30s far ahead of their Gen X counterparts when they were that age, according to data released this year by a team of Harvard University economists. Scholars and local business leaders believe much of the progress stems from entrepreneurial growth fueled by cooperation and innovation, all buttressed by tight family and community ties. Mark Partridge, an Ohio State University economist who has studied Holmes County, points to an “extreme networking effect,” where companies—and cousins—routinely help each other out due to the Amish culture. While other counties can’t necessarily replicate this cocktail, they can draw on key ingredients, Renn argues. He quotes Partridge: “There’s no real strong reason you have to be Amish. You can have a tight social network with effective social organizations, chambers of commerce, business organizations, other kind of nonprofits.”
Renn adds that, “While the Anabaptists are about as far as you can get from Calvinism and still be Protestant, the [Wall Street Journal] article also hints that historic Protestant values and culture are key to Amish success there. Namely sobriety, thrift, a work ethic, civic mindedness (of a sort), and a sense of accountability to God in stewarding what they’ve been given.” As one Amish businessman in the article says, “We believe that God has given us everything that we have, and we are going to make the most of every opportunity.” Renn writes that civic mindedness among the Amish seems to mostly apply within their own community. “This is similar to what the sociologist E. Digby Baltzell noted about the Pennsylvania Quakers. Whereas the Calvinist Puritans built up genuinely public institutions in Massachusetts, the Quakers built largely sectarian ones. Examples like Holmes County, Ohio or Sioux County, Iowa show that the Protestant ethic still produces great results even today.” Renn notes that the free passes that the Amish have been given—such as not paying self-employment taxes—may not last. “They are becoming too numerous, are perceived as taking over in various areas, and are starting to make real money. The first rule of being a tolerated minority that lives differently is not to get too big or too visible. The Amish have broken it, and I suspect that means there will be a much more skeptical gaze turned their direction in the future.”
High fertility rates among the Amish have also been cited as a factor in their business productivity, but this faith group shows various birth rates, often influenced by their strictness, according to a paper presented at this year’s meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, held in Pittsburgh in late October and attended by RW. Matthew Conrad (University of Connecticut) analyzed Amish directories from 2004–2020 in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, comprising 37,000 households. He found that while fertility remains high among the Amish generally, with families of between six to eight children, there are substantial differences among the various Amish sects. The very strict Swartzentruber Amish have the most children, among both farming and non-farming families, followed by more moderate Amish groups, such as the Andy Weaver Amish and the technologically lax New Order Amish. Conrad also found that clergy families have more children, and that where Amish settlements have more clergy, they have higher fertility rates. Those families that used more biblical names for their children also had more offspring.
