How we calculated the size of the church in the United States

How we calculated the size of the church in the United States

RELIGIOUS institutions in America are not required to report income or spending. In the absence of co-ordination among local and national church organisations and their subsequent co-operation with The Economist, we attempted to estimate the total economic heft of the Catholic church in America by constructing a national operating budget. Here is a back-of-the-envelope calculation.

The $170 billion total was derived by adding together the following: