According to an Ancestry.com report, Canada has seen a 1200% increase in users who paid for online family history since 1994. During the same ten-year period, the United States saw a 1300% increase. Numbers drop substantially in the four other countries surveyed: Sweden – 700%; UK – 644%; Australia – 510%; and Germany where only 0.2% use paid for services.
In 2014, more than one in three (36%) online adults used the internet to learn more about their family history – double those in 2008. And this percentage is expected to double again by 2025.
Two-thirds of people feel it has become “more important than ever to know their family history.”
These are some of the results published in the Global Family History Report commissioned by Ancestry.com and conducted by Future Foundation. More than 6,000 people in six of the world’s largest economies, the UK, Canada, US, Australia, Sweden, and German, were surveyed.
I would be curious to know the impact this increase in paid for online research has had on genealogy societies’ membership.
Ancestry’s survey across six countries reveals interesting statistics.
Across the six countries:
- A generation ago, the average family history stretched back 149 years. Today it has grown to 183 years.
- In Canada, in 1984, the average family history stretched back 153 years. Today, it stretches back on average 185 years.
- 71% have personally become more interested in family history in recent years.
- 60% feel a personal responsibility to act as a ‘guardian’ of the family history.
- 55% of young people are inspired to learn more about their family history through talking to older family members, rising to 62% of 18-24 year-olds.
- 57% of older people were inspired to work on their family stories after coming into possession of documents photos or other materials.
- 29% of people have been influenced by broader media awareness and television programs to research their family history.
- 29% can track their family history back to before 1800.
- 16% can trace their family history to earlier than 1700.
- The oldest family histories are found in Sweden (averaging 2002 years).
- 46% of people in the six countries studied have discovered living relatives they never knew about as a result of family history.
Benefits of family history
The majority of amateur family historians across the six countries (79%) simply enjoy their research as a leisure pursuit. However, learning about family history provides benefits.
- 67% feel knowing their family history has made them a wiser person.
- 77% say it has helped them understand who they are.
- 66% say it has ‘given me more pride in who I am’.
- 46% feel it has inspired them to be a better person.
