Depending on where one lives, readers might be more or less familiar with the Amish and other similar Anabaptist sects, such as the Old Order Mennonites, who are known for driving around in horse-drawn buggies and not using much modern technology. However, even people who are used to seeing buggies driving down the street might be surprised to learn the full extent to which the Amish have bucked many contemporary sociological trends. From health and life satisfaction to birth rates, the Amish are extreme outliers compared to the rest of the U.S. and their strict adherence to an almost 17th century way of life provides a useful point of contrast for those of us living in modernity to reflect on certain things we take for granted.
Who are the Amish?
The Amish originated in Switzerland and Southern Germany in the 17th century as the followers of Jakob Ammann, an Annabaptist who broke away from the Mennonite movement because he did not believe it was sufficiently strict. Like the other Annabaptist sects, the Amish were harshly persecuted by the authorities, both religious and secular, for their religious beliefs and the way in which those beliefs, such as pacifism and a rejection of infant baptism and the population records that went along with it, undermined the power of the state. Eventually, in the face of persecution, over many many decades, the entire Amish population relocated to North America, first to Pennsylvania, and then elsewhere in the midwest and some places in Canada.
The Amish are truly fascinating for many reasons, such as their pacifism and insistence on forgiving those who have wronged them. (Perhaps the most noted case of this forgiveness is the Amish community’s response to the 2006 West Nickel Mines school shooting where a deranged man shot 10 young girls, killing 5 of them before killing himself. Members of the Amish community attended the man’s funeral, and in fact outnumbered the non-Amish mourners, and diverted some of the money that had been raised around the world to give to the man’s family that was left behind.) However, for our purposes here, they can provide a great deal of insight into our relationship with material goods and technology and how that relationship can affect our quality of life.
Amish Health and Life Satisfaction
Anyone with the least bit familiarity with the Amish is aware of their supposed rejection of modern technology. However, characterizing this attitude as a blanket rejection would be inaccurate. Rather, the Amish are very deliberate in seeking to understand how the technology we adopt affects the rest of our lives and social relations and then adopting accordingly.
It seems that they are certainly on to something, because numerous data points indicate that the Amish live happier and healthier lives than the average American.
The Amish have a long life expectancy (in fact it was longer than the average Americans for many decades, though the average has now surpassed theirs due to the Amish largely eschewing drastic end of life prolonging care), lower rates of high blood pressure and heart attacks and visit the hospital just a quarter as much as non-Amish. Obesity rates among the Amish are around 4 percent compared to around 30 percent in the general public, despite a diet high in carbohydrates and sugar (which Amish scholar Professor Mark Louden attributes to their taking an average of 17 to 19 thousand steps a day). The Amish also have markedly lower rates of anxiety and depression than the rest of the population.
While there are numerous problems with “happiness studies” it is worth noting that one methodology found that the Amish had the same level of life satisfaction as Forbes Magazine’s list of the 400 richest Americans.
Also, where the Amish (speaking specifically of Old Order Amish who are classified as those who speak Pennsylvania Dutch (a German dialect that is not mutually intelligible with modern German) and do not have a phone in their house) most are most strikingly different from the rest of the population, not just in America, but in nearly all the world is their very high birth rate. The Amish population has been doubling about every 20 years. Starting with a population of around 5 thousand in 1900, the Amish population is now around 370,000. From 2001-2015 the average number of births per Amish woman was 6-7. In contrast, the total fertility rate (TFR) among Americans was 1.6 per woman in 2020 (note that if a population does not have a TFR of 2.1 it will experience population decline and America has only been experiencing population growth thanks to immigration). This has led to jokes that we will all be Amish or that America will have an Amish majority in the future, with some estimating that thanks to compound growth there might be around 7 million Amish by 2100.
What’s even more remarkable, is that the Amish have a very high retention rate, likely above 90 percent. This means that Amish teenagers and young adults, after a period of independence, choose to be baptized and agree to abide by the rules (called the Ortung) of their Amish community. Among those who choose not to join their Amish community many simply become Old Order Mennonite, which is slightly less strict.
The root causes of Amish life satisfaction are not a great mystery. Sociology has known for ages that being part of an intact and supportive family, being a member of a well-integrated community, being an active religious practitioner, and being physically active are all key ingredients to living a happy and healthy life.
However, while outside conversions are not unheard of, the vast majority of us do not desire to become Amish and adopt a 17th century style of living. The question then becomes what can we learn from the Amish in order to try and adapt our own lives and build communities that are more conducive to human flourishing than current social structures, practices, and beliefs without completely discarding modern technology.
In the following essays in this series we will explore some of these practices and beliefs in more depth, especially when it comes to underlying ways of thinking about material goods and consumerism, as well as differing basic assumptions about life and our place in it that contribute to Amish life satisfaction.
Zachary Yost is a freelance writer and researcher located in the Pittsburgh area. You can subscribe to his Substack, The Yost Post, here.
