Presbyterian Congregations, 1973-1988

"Benevolences as a percentage of receipts have declined in many Protestant denominations over the past three decades. To explain the decline, this study develops an economic model of religious congregations and estimates a version of it with data on a national sample of 40 Presbyterian congregations from 1973 to 1988." (Krohn, Gregory A., 1995, p.17).

Data File

Cases: 16
Variables: 453
Weight Variable: None

Data Collection

Date Collected: 1990

Funded By

The Lilly Endowment, Inc.

Collection Procedures

"The number of members, receipts, and expenditures of various types for the sample congregations and the national aggregates were obtained from statistics published in various issues of Minutes of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and its predecessor bodies.

The national average of Presbyterian clergy salaries came from various issues of the PCUSA publication, Monday Morning.

The fixed weight price index for personal consumption expenditures and the consumer price index for fuel and utilities were obtained from the Citibank economic data base, August 1989.

The fixed-weight price index for personal consumption expenditures on medical insurance was taken from various issues of Survey of Current Business.

County per capita personal income came from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, on diskette.

The unemployment and poverty rates were obtained from the Economic Report of the President 1990.

The average marginal federal income tax rates are from Barro and Sahasakul (1983), updated in Throop (1991)." (Krohn, Gregory, 1995, p. 34).

Government transfer payments to individuals were obtained from the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis, on diskette.

Sampling Procedures

The population was all churches in the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A). A random sample of 100 congregations, from the 1988 Minutes of the General Assembly, resulted in 40 congregations with complete data for the study.

Principal Investigators

Gregory A. Krohn

Related Publications

Krohn, Gregory A. 1995. "The Receipts and Benevolences of Presbyterian Congregations, 1973-1988," Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 34 (1): 17-34.

Notes

This is an historical trends data set. The data have been set up using year as the unit of analysis (case). Each year has 10 variables (or measures) for 40 congregations, resulting in a total of 400 variables for each year. For more details on the construction of the data file see Krohn, 1995.

Note: In the original data, most variables were recorded in raw dollars. These variables have been reformatted for this file, having been divided by 1,000. They include:

REC1-40, LOC1-40, CAP1-40, BEN1-40, BENA1-40, BENP1-40, BENS1-40,
BENG1-40, BENO1-40, YCO1-40, MEM, WMIN.

Variables that retain their original values are:
MEM1-40, POV, CPIFUEL, PMEDFW, PCFW, TRAN, POP, RTAX, REC, BEN.