Harvard Global Flourishing Study · Data Dashboard · May 2026

Latter-day Saints, by the numbers

200,000+ respondents across 22 countries. The U.S. religious-group breakdown from the Harvard Global Flourishing Study, visualized — and the four findings the Deseret News op-ed (Justin Dyer, May 17, 2026) pulled out for Latter-day Saints.

Study: Harvard Global Flourishing Study (GFS) Wave: Year 1 baseline (US slice) Sample: 200,000+ across 22 countries Published: Nature Mental Health

Weekly worship attendance

65%

Highest of all U.S. religious groups measured. Evangelical: 59% · Baptist: 45% · Presbyterian: 37%.

Depression rate

8.5%

~2.2× lower than "no religion" (16%) and ~2.2× lower than agnostic / atheist / never religious (19%).

"Highly happy"

30%

Roughly double the rates among no-religion (16%), atheist (14%), agnostic (12%), and never religious (11%).

Felt loved by mother growing up

94%

vs. 85–87% among those distant from faith. Father: 90% vs. 79–80%.

1 · Weekly religious service attendance — U.S.

Share of adult adherents in each tradition who report attending worship services at least weekly. LDS leads, by a meaningful margin.

Source: GFS U.S. slice, reported in the Deseret News op-ed by Justin Dyer (BYU), May 17, 2026.

2 · Depression rate

Share reporting depression. Lower is better.

Spread: 8.5% (LDS) to 19% (agnostic / atheist / never religious) — a 2.2× delta. The "never religious" cohort is the highest in the analysis.

3 · "Highly happy"

Share self-reporting as "highly happy." Dyer notes LDS are "statistically tied" with several other conservative Christian faiths at the top.

Spread: 30% (LDS) to 11% (never religious) — a 2.7× delta.

4 · Felt loved by mother and father growing up

Two paired measures from the childhood-environment battery. LDS adults report substantially higher rates of feeling loved by both parents compared to those who later became distant from faith.

Note: The "Distant from faith" group is the Deseret op-ed's framing for the comparison cohort (no-religion / agnostic / atheist / never-religious). Father-love gap (90% vs. 79–80%) is wider than mother-love gap (94% vs. 85–87%).

5 · Finds strength or comfort from religion / spirituality

LDS share who report religion or spirituality as a source of strength or comfort in their lives.

89% of Latter-day Saints — the highest individual stat reported in the Dyer write-up.

6 · Felt criticized by religious community

Share who report feeling criticized by their own religious community. Dyer flags this as the place LDS is not statistically distinct — it is tied with Baptist, Presbyterian, Evangelical, and Buddhist respondents.

11% across all five groups — Dyer's read is that the perception of criticism is "not particularly unique across faiths."

What the data says (and doesn't)

Claim	Data point	Caveat
LDS leads in weekly worship attendance.	65% LDS vs. 59% Evangelical, 53% Pentecostal/Charismatic, 45% Baptist, 37% Presbyterian.	Self-report; standard religious-survey bias applies to all denominations.
Depression rates are 2–3× lower in LDS than secular groups.	8.5% LDS vs. 16% no-religion, 19% agnostic/atheist/never-religious.	Correlation, not causation. Self-selection (people who stay in church may already be less depressed) is a real confound.
"Highly happy" rates are close to double the secular cohort.	30% LDS vs. 11–16% secular.	Statistically tied with several other conservative Christian faiths at the top — this is a religion-vs-secular finding more than an LDS-vs-other-religion finding.
Childhood parental-love rates are higher among adult LDS.	Mother: 94% vs. 85–87% · Father: 90% vs. 79–80%.	Measures adult memory of childhood, not contemporaneous childhood reports.
Felt-criticism by own religious community is not unique to LDS.	~11% across LDS, Baptist, Presbyterian, Evangelical, Buddhist.	Dyer notes "it's not entirely clear what the finding means" — higher in-community expectations may produce higher perceived criticism, real or misperceived.

Methodology — quick

Study: The Global Flourishing Study (GFS) is a five-year longitudinal panel led by Harvard's Human Flourishing Program in collaboration with Baylor and Gallup. Sample of 200,000+ adults across 22 countries, with annual re-interviews.
Flourishing dimensions: Happiness & life satisfaction, mental & physical health, meaning & purpose, character & virtue, close social relationships, and financial & material stability. A composite "flourishing index" combines them.
Primary publication: The worldwide Year-1 baseline analysis appears in Nature Mental Health (Nature Mental Health 2025; paywalled).
This dashboard: Pulls only the U.S. religious-group breakdown surfaced in Justin Dyer's May 17, 2026 op-ed in the Deseret News. Numbers reproduced exactly as reported in the op-ed; sub-numbers (e.g., "ties" with specific other groups) preserved.

The Dyer thesis in one line: Latter-day Saints score near the top of every U.S. religious-group comparison in the GFS — except perceived criticism by one's own faith community, where LDS is statistically tied with the next-most-observant groups. The cleanest reading: most of the LDS advantage is a religion-vs-secular advantage, with LDS sitting at the top of the religious distribution by attendance.

Honest caveats: Cross-sectional data + self-report + correlation, not causation. The "highly happy" gap is real but largely explained by the broader religion-vs-secular effect (LDS are statistically tied with several other faiths at the top). The parental-love measures are adult memories of childhood, not contemporaneous data. The Nature paper itself is paywalled; this dashboard relies on Dyer's reported figures.

Sources

Deseret op-ed (Justin Dyer, BYU)	Deseret News · May 17, 2026
Harvard Global Flourishing Study	hfh.fas.harvard.edu/global-flourishing-study
Worldwide Year-1 analysis	Nature Mental Health 2025 · s44220-025-00423-5 (paywalled)
Related — LDS retention	Deseret News · Dec 15, 2025
Related — Representative LDS belief data	Deseret News · May 7, 2026