Editor's note: The Amish population in North America has reached about 421,340 in 2026, growing roughly 32 percent since 2017 and doubling about every 20 years, driven by large families and high retention. Pennsylvania
remains the largest Amish state, with about 96,500 people (roughly 23% of the U.S. total), an 18% increase since 2020. Its Lancaster settlement alone holds around 44,000. Still,
high land costs are pushing some young Amish families out of Lancaster County toward central and northwestern Pennsylvania, and to states such as Kentucky, Wisconsin, Missouri, and Indiana. Growth in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana has slowed to under 2% a year, while newer settlements in the Mountain West, including South Dakota and Montana, are growing much faster from small bases. Pennsylvania's Amish are spreading out rather than leaving. From current statistics, there is approximately an 11 percent (likely not confirmed) uptake in vaccines within
Amish communities.
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PA Public Health Officials Target Amish Door-to-Door For Measles Vaccine Re-Education, On-Site Injection
By
Benjamin Bartee | September 27 2026
In Pennsylvania Amish country, an obese and remarkably homely nurse in the employ of the state public health authority, Dale Weiser, pictured in all of her plus-sized glory
HERE, has been going door-to-door with an arsenal of measles vaccines in tow to "encourage" vaccine uptake among the community that "abstains from Western medicine" – in other words, a community full of domestic terrorists begging for the business end of the long arm of the law.