Foreclosure mystery: Why can't conservative Utahns afford their mortgage?

During the housing bubble, they led the nation in bankruptcies. Now that the bubble is bust, they're among the top states in foreclosures. A RealtyTrac report released Thursday showed they had the fifth-highest foreclosure rate among the states, with 1 in 231 homes receiving a foreclosure notice in January. That's nearly double the national rate and not far from No. 4 Florida's rate of 1 in 187.

The US foreclosure rate actually fell 10 percent from December's level – and Utah was down nearly 12 percent – but RealtyTrac suggested they could surge again in coming months if last year's pattern holds true.

It's relatively straightforward why the housing bubble walloped Florida and the other Big Four foreclosure states...

But Utah homes rose only half that much during the decade. What's going on in Utah?

"It's a lot of younger people who spent way, way beyond their means, absurd amounts of money trying to keep up with their folks," says one Utah resident who helps counsel financially troubled families at his church. They're "cool, nice, wonderful people, but an awful lot of them don't know how to spend money very wisely."

In mid-decade, when Utah was tops in bankruptcies, various commentators pinned the blame on Mormon religious and cultural practices, such as tithing, creating large families, buying homes at a young age, and as one critic put it: "the pressure in Mormonism to be, or at least appear, financially successful as proof the Lord is blessing them."

Indeed, Mormons in 2004 had a bankruptcy rate that was approaching twice that of the national average. But a 2007 study by two Harvard Law School graduates found that rates among non-Mormons in Utah were even higher, suggesting that religion, if anything, was restraining bankruptcies.

I truly don't think you understand my contention. You happily quoted: "various commentators pinned the blame on Mormon religious and cultural practices" I questioned why if non-Mormons are the worse offenders, are "Mormon religious and cultural practices" to blame.

OK let's deal with part of that -- the non-Mormons of Utah -- but then after dealing w/that, I'm going to say to you, "Look, Utahns, BOTH Lds and non-Lds ARE the 'worst offenders' -- and you just seem to want to waffle back & forth on part of that reality...and when/how are you going to address that?"

We know that approximately 40%+ of Utah is non-Mormon. The breakdown is somewhere along these lines:
Lds: 56-60%
Non-Lds: 40-44%

Of these, both Mormon & Non-Mormon, what % are people for whom "religion is not an important part of their lives?" According to Mississippi most religious, Vermont least, survey says the answer to that for Utah is 31%. Now obviously that's going to include inactive Jack Mormons. So to toss out a # -- let's say if 1/10th Lds -- or about 1/5th of this USA Today figure of 31% are "Jack Mormons." Then Utah state's breakdown looks like this:
Active Lds: 51-54%
Jack Lds: 6%
Non-Lds for whom religion is not an important part of their lives: 25%
Remainder (Christians, JWs, Muslims, Buddhists, etc.): 15-18%

So, you ask how are "Mormon religious & cultural practices" to blame on impacting the 40%+ non-Mormons getting foreclosures. The simple answer? For the sake of this discussion, why does there have to be a correlation?

I mean, wouldn't we agree that the world of inactive, atheistic, agnostic, religionists will always be the world & act as the world? (And in Utah, apparently that's 31% of the population, says USA Today in link above).

But did you understand my earlier posts? More Mormons ARE getting foreclosures in Utah than non-Mormons! (And how's that? Well, 'cause the simple demographic: By a 3-to-2 ratio, more Mormons live in the state!)

If that's still problematic -- go back to post #50 w/my basketball illustration...in that case 6 Mormon players contributed an avg of 22 TEAM fouls per game compared to 4 non-Mormon players contributing 16...a coach in that situation isn't going to just zero in on the 4 non-Lds players when a foul epidemic is rampant throughout the lineup! -- which is what you seemingly keep wanting to do.

My bottom line point here
If the oranges represent non-Mormon Utahns, well stop comparing apples (lds Utahns) to Oranges...
...and start comparing apples to Hawaiian pineapples or Georgia peaches. IOW: Why are the supposed "only church on the earth" folks (Lds Doctrines & Covenants 1:30; 1 Nephi 14:9-10) having so much higher foreclosure rates than most of the rest of the country? The world (the inactive religionists of Utah) will be the world; but isn't the so-called "restorational church" -- the supposed only church in town -- supposed to be salt & light standing out in contrast? Aren't they supposed to exhibit a higher standard than most of the rest of the country? And why is the foreclosure rate up 129% in the most concentrated Mormon region in Utah (through last July)? Why is the foreclosure rate @ 2.2% -- in the Top 31 WORST regions in the country! -- happening in a place that is over 85% Mormon? (Provo-Orem area) [See link in post #50 to 7/29/09 Trib article on that]

So, let's deal with that relativistic adjective you keep tossing out -- "worse"/"worst":

I questioned why if non-Mormons are the worse offenders...

To emphasize: WHAT stat do you keep falling back on?
Answer: You keep comparing non-Mormon Utahns (Oranges) to Mormon Utahns (apples).
In response, in contrast, what stat have I tried to bring to your attention to let it sink in? Well, I'm comparing Utahns -- BOTH Mormon & non-Mormon (Apples & Oranges) -- to non-Utahns (pineapples, peaches, etc.)! (Why? Because THIS is the stat that matters more!) You can always find somebody worse off on any given "totem pole" to think you're better. But when you start looking at where you are in that overall totem pole, well, there's more of the story.

It seems to me you keep waffling back & forth here on this reality:
First you said, non-Mormons are the "worse offenders";
then in your last post you said something I agree with: I see the blame lies on Utanhs in general.
Now, with this post, you're back to the "worse offenders"...

Now why is that problematic? Because the adjective "worse" is a relative term (my totem pole illustration above). It's like if you were a commissioned sales mgr working for me: If I told you, "Hey, your group of salesmen is in the bottom 5 nation-wide in the company" -- and then if your response to me is, "Hey, at least the section within my umbrella that I have direct oversight on isn't quite as bad as the other group in the other group in my section of whom I DON'T directly oversee," I'm not sure that would fly with management! And then if in repeated conversations you over & over kept deflecting the convo to "Hey, THEY are the worst offenders"...then, at some pt, I as a mgr would need to bring you back to reality and say, "Hey, even if I tossed that other sales section overboard, you'd still be 'flunking' in comparison to just about every other nation-wide sales group. Here I thought you were so supposed to my 'ace' sales mgr. Here we thought we were grooming you to eventually take over the company as CEO. And when I look at your REALLY 'crack sales' team -- and how they are about the worst of the worst! How am I suppose to explain all this away to the rest of management?!!"

http://www.gallup.com/poll/125849/Hawaii-Tops-Utah-Nation-Best.aspx

I guess those "evil Mormons/Utahns" don't have such a bad thing going afterall.Utah comes in at a close number 2 to Hawaii in its citizens having a sense of well-being, after spending several years at number 1. Hawaii probably only topped them because they're one of the few states spared from the recession:

Well-Being: Hawaii Tops Utah for Nation’s BestCompared with 2008, 27 states improved, 18 deteriorated, and 5 unchanged

by Elizabeth Mendes

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Hawaii's residents had the highest well-being in the nation in 2009, pulling ahead of 2008 leader Utah, and coming in with a new high state Well-Being Index score of 70.2. Utah and Montana are also among the top well-being states in the country, sharing the same score of 68.3. Kentucky (62.3) and West Virginia (60.5) have the two lowest well-being scores, as they did in 2008.

Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index 2009 state-level data encompass more than 350,000 interviews conducted among national adults aged 18 older across all 50 states. Gallup and Healthways started tracking state-level well-being in 2008. The Well-Being Index score for the nation and for each state is an average of six sub-indexes, which individually examine life evaluation, emotional health, work environment, physical health, healthy behaviors, and access to basic necessities.

The Well-Being Index is calculated on a scale of 0 to 100, where a score of 100 would represent ideal well-being. Well-Being Index scores among states vary by a narrow range of 9.7 points. The 2009 Well-Being Index score for the country is 65.9, unchanged from 2008.

Nine of the top 10 well-being states -- Hawaii, Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, Kansas, Montana, Colorado, Utah, and Alaska -- are in the Midwest and the West. Seven of the 11 lowest well-being states are in the South. The general geography of well-being in 2009 remained similar to 2008.

In addition to having the highest overall Well-Being Index score, Hawaii was best in the nation on three of the six well-being sub-indexes, Life Evaluation, Emotional Health, and Physical Health. At the opposite end of the spectrum is West Virginia, which performed the worst on the same three sub-indexes. Utah does the best on the Work Environment sub-index, with a score more than 10 points higher than that of the worst state on this measure, Delaware. As in 2008, Mississippi is at the bottom on Basic Access, and Kentucky scores the worst on Healthy Behavior.

Each state's sub-index score reflects the average of the positive percentages found for each of items detailed in the chart above. For example, Mississippi's Basic Access score of 77.3 means that, on average, more than three-quarters of its residents do have access across each of the basic necessities asked about in the sub-index, but that still leaves a large number who are in need, representing millions of people.

Change in Well-Being From 2008 to 2009

Generally speaking, well-being has been fairly stable over time; most states exhibited little change from 2008 to 2009. Only four states -- South Dakota, Mississippi, Hawaii, and Iowa -- saw an increase of two or more points in their Well-Being Index score from 2008 to 2009. Wyoming saw the largest decrease at 1.3 points. Overall, 18 states moved in a negative direction, 27 in a positive direction, and 5 remained unchanged.

Some of the six sub-indexes scores are more likely to move because of several factors including the number of questions included in the sub-index and the content of the questions. For example, the Life Evaluation sub-index, which is calculated using two questions asking respondents to rate their lives now and in the future, score changes a good deal throughout the course of the year. Across states, 2008 to 2009 change in Life Evaluation scores ranged from 11.0 in Maine to -1.7 in Wyoming. After Maine, two of the biggest gains in Life Evaluation scores from 2008 to 2009, 10.7 and 10.5 points, were in North Dakota and South Dakota, respectively, also the two states with the highest percentage of residents who were satisfied with their standard of living in 2009. Although Wyoming was the only state in which the Life Evaluation score decreased last year in comparison to 2008, the downtick is not statistically significant.

Basic Access scores, on the other hand, are less likely to change over time. This sub-index is made up of 13 individual questions, many of which are items that require community, business, or governmental intervention to change such as if the city where the respondent lives in is getting better or worse as a place to live and if it is easy to get affordable fruits and vegetables where the respondent lives. The year-over-year range of change on this measure is from 0.8 points to -2.1 points and most of the change is not statistically significant, meaning that access to the basic necessities a person needs to have high well-being is essentially stagnant across the United States. However, cities and communities potentially have the opportunity to move the needle on the Basic Access metric by taking significant steps to improve the health and well-being of their residents.

While certain metrics are in the control of the individual and others fall upon businesses and the government to change, what is clear is that a much bigger society-wide effort is needed for more Americans to move their Well-Being Index score closer to the optimal level of 100 points.

Gallup's "State of the States" series reveals state-by-state differences on political, economic, and well-being measures Gallup tracks each day. New stories will be released throughout the month of February.

Survey Methods

Results are based on telephone interviews with more than 353,849 national adults, aged 18 and older, conducted Jan. 1-Dec. 31, 2009, as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. For results based on the total sample of national adults, one can say with 95% confidence that the maximum margin of sampling error is ±0.2 percentage points.

The margin of sampling error for most states is ±1 to ±2 percentage points, but is as high as ±4 points for smaller states such as Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, Delaware, and Hawaii.

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being categorizes the District of Columbia as a congressional district.

Interviews are conducted with respondents on landline telephones (for respondents with a landline telephone) and cellular phones (for respondents who are cell phone only).

In addition to sampling error, question wording and practical difficulties in conducting surveys can introduce error or bias into the findings of public opinion polls.

About the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index™

The Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index measures the daily pulse of U.S. well-being and provides best-in-class solutions for a healthier world. To learn more, please visit well-beingindex.com.

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