But first, you might ask, how could there suddenly be more deaths than births, given that American lifespans are so long? One key reason is that U.S. birth rates and the number of births have dropped since the onset of the Great Recession in late 2007, and non-Hispanic whites also have a below-average birth rate. Another reason is the age makeup of the non-Hispanic white population: It is older than other groups (see chart) and includes a lower share of women in their childbearing years.

For now, the non-Hispanic white population is still growing because of immigration from abroad. But both the Census Bureau and the Pew Research Center have forecast that the number of white non-Hispanic Americans would decline in coming decades, as the death-to-birth ratio grows faster than could be offset by immigration. The recent fertility downturn may have sped up the growth of the death-to-birth ratio. From July 1, 2011 to July 1, 2012, the Census Bureau estimates there were about 12,000 more deaths among non-Hispanic whites than births.

Non-Hispanic whites are the bulwark of the nation’s giant post-World War II Baby Boom generation. The first of this group turned 65 in 2011, and 10,000 a day are forecast to do so in the coming decades, through 2029.

The Census Bureau recently projected that the share of Americans ages 65 and older would rise to 20% by 2030, compared with 13.7% in 2012. The working-age population, people ages 18 to 64, is projected to decline as a share of the total, as is the share of children.

Video: U.S. Census Bureau Statistics on Population Change (Washington Journal)

That report projected the racial and ethnic makeup of the U.S. population through 2060. If you combine key numbers from those two Census Bureau reports into a single chart, as we’ve done below, you’ll get a feel for a political and demographic drama that’s going unfold over the next half century.

And if you’re a Republican thinking of running for president one day, you may be a bit concerned.

The seven columns on the left side of the chart show how the white share of the vote for president has steadily declined over the past quarter century. The two columns on the right show the racial composition of the population now and in 2060, as projected by the Census Bureau.

A couple of patterns stand out. First, whites were 74% of voters last year at a time when they were just 63% of the population. This racial turnout gap is driven by the fact that a disproportionate share of non-whites are either too young to vote, not eligible to vote (because they’re not citizens), or just don’t vote. All of these factors could change over time.

Second, if we look at the 2060 projections, we can see that there’s a lot more diversity yet to come. The Census Bureau makes its projections based on an analysis of fertility rates, mortality rates and immigration trends. They’re not set in stone. Things change. But they give a sense of the general direction of things. And many of these future demographics are already a reality—for example,  about half of newborns in 2010 were non-white.

In 2012, Mitt Romney captured just 17% of the non-white vote overall, according to the national exit poll, including 6% of the black vote, 27% of the Hispanic vote and 26% of the Asian-American vote.  Unless future Republican presidential candidates do better with these groups, the electoral math will keep getting more difficult for the GOP.

The report on the racial and ethnic breakdown of voters in 2012 released Wednesday by the Census Bureau attracted lots of well-deserved attention. But for readers of political tea-leaves, a report the bureau issued last December tells an even more compelling story.

That report projected the racial and ethnic makeup of the U.S. population through 2060. If you combine key numbers from those two Census Bureau reports into a single chart, as we’ve done below, you’ll get a feel for a political and demographic drama that’s going unfold over the next half century.

And if you’re a Republican thinking of running for president one day, you may be a bit concerned.

The seven columns on the left side of the chart show how the white share of the vote for president has steadily declined over the past quarter century. The two columns on the right show the racial composition of the population now and in 2060, as projected by the Census Bureau.

A couple of patterns stand out. First, whites were 74% of voters last year at a time when they were just 63% of the population. This racial turnout gap is driven by the fact that a disproportionate share of non-whites are either too young to vote, not eligible to vote (because they’re not citizens), or just don’t vote. All of these factors could change over time.

Second, if we look at the 2060 projections, we can see that there’s a lot more diversity yet to come. The Census Bureau makes its projections based on an analysis of fertility rates, mortality rates and immigration trends. They’re not set in stone. Things change. But they give a sense of the general direction of things. And many of these future demographics are already a reality—for example,  about half of newborns in 2010 were non-white.

In 2012, Mitt Romney captured just 17% of the non-white vote overall, according to the national exit poll, including 6% of the black vote, 27% of the Hispanic vote and 26% of the Asian-American vote.  Unless future Republican presidential candidates do better with these groups, the electoral math will keep getting more difficult for the GOP.

Paul Taylor is Executive Vice President of the Pew Research Center and Director, Pew Hispanic Center and Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends project.

The world’s Muslim population is expected to increase by about 35% in the next 20 years, rising from 1.6 billion in 2010 to 2.2 billion by 2030, according to new population projections by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life.

Globally, the Muslim population is forecast to grow at about twice the rate of the non-Muslim population over the next two decades — an average annual growth rate of 1.5% for Muslims, compared with 0.7% for non-Muslims. If current trends continue, Muslims will make up 26.4% of the world’s total projected population of 8.3 billion in 2030, up from 23.4% of the estimated 2010 world population of 6.9 billion.

While the global Muslim population is expected to grow at a faster rate than the non-Muslim population, the Muslim population nevertheless is expected to grow at a slower pace in the next two decades than it did in the previous two decades. From 1990 to 2010, the global Muslim population increased at an average annual rate of 2.2%, compared with the projected rate of 1.5% for the period from 2010 to 2030.

These are among the key findings of a comprehensive report on the size, distribution and growth of the global Muslim population. The report by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life seeks to provide up-to-date estimates of the number of Muslims around the world in 2010 and to project the growth of the Muslim population from 2010 to 2030. The projections are based both on past demographic trends and on assumptions about how these trends will play out in future years. Making these projections inevitably entails a host of uncertainties, including political ones. Changes in the political climate in the United States or European nations, for example, could dramatically affect the patterns of Muslim migration.

If current trends continue, however, 79 countries will have a million or more Muslim inhabitants in 2030, up from 72 countries today.¹ A majority of the world’s Muslims (about 60%) will continue to live in the Asia-Pacific region, while about 20% will live in the Middle East and North Africa, as is the case today. But Pakistan is expected to surpass Indonesia as the country with the single largest Muslim population. The portion of the world’s Muslims living in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to rise; in 20 years, for example, more Muslims are likely to live in Nigeria than in Egypt. Muslims will remain relatively small minorities in Europe and the Americas, but they are expected to constitute a growing share of the total population in these regions.

In the United States, for example, the population projections show the number of Muslims more than doubling over the next two decades, rising from 2.6 million in 2010 to 6.2 million in 2030, in large part because of immigration and higher-than-average fertility among Muslims. The Muslim share of the U.S. population (adults and children) is projected to grow from 0.8% in 2010 to 1.7% in 2030, making Muslims roughly as numerous as Jews or Episcopalians are in the United States today. Although several European countries will have substantially higher percentages of Muslims, the United States is projected to have a larger number of Muslims by 2030 than any European country other than Russia and France. (See the Americas section of the full report for more details.)

In Europe as a whole, the Muslim share of the population is expected to grow by nearly one-third over the next 20 years, rising from 6% of the region’s inhabitants in 2010 to 8% in 2030. In absolute numbers, Europe’s Muslim population is projected to grow from 44.1 million in 2010 to 58.2 million in 2030. The greatest increases — driven primarily by continued migration — are likely to occur in Western and Northern Europe, where Muslims will be approaching double-digit percentages of the population in several countries. In the United Kingdom, for example, Muslims are expected to account for 8.2% of the population in 2030, up from an estimated 4.6% today. In Austria, Muslims are projected to reach 9.3% of the population in 2030, up from 5.7% today; in Sweden, 9.9% (up from 4.9% today); in Belgium, 10.2% (up from 6% today); and in France, 10.3% (up from 7.5% today). (See the Europe section of the full report for more details.)

Several factors account for the faster projected growth among Muslims than non-Muslims worldwide. Generally, Muslim populations tend to have higher fertility rates (more children per woman) than non-Muslim populations. In addition, a larger share of the Muslim population is in, or soon will enter, the prime reproductive years (ages 15-29). Also, improved health and economic conditions in Muslim-majority countries have led to greater-than-average declines in infant and child mortality rates, and life expectancy is rising even faster in Muslim-majority countries than in other less-developed countries. (See the section on Main Factors Driving Population Growth in the full report for more details. For a list of Muslim-majority countries and definitions for the terms less- and more-developed, see the section on Muslim- Majority Countries.)

Growing, But at a Slower Rate

The growth of the global Muslim population, however, should not obscure another important demographic trend: the rate of growth among Muslims has been slowing in recent decades and is likely to continue to decline over the next 20 years, as the graph below shows. From 1990 to 2000, the Muslim population grew at an average annual rate of 2.3%. The growth rate dipped to 2.1% from 2000 to 2010, and it is projected to drop to 1.7% from 2010 to 2020 and 1.4% from 2020 to 2030 (or 1.5% annually over the 20-year period from 2010 to 2030, as previously noted).

The declining growth rate is due primarily to falling fertility rates in many Muslim-majority countries, including such populous nations as Indonesia and Bangladesh. Fertility is dropping as more women in these countries obtain a secondary education, living standards rise and people move from rural areas to cities and towns. (See the Related Factors section in the full report for more details.)

The slowdown in Muslim population growth is most pronounced in the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East-North Africa and Europe, and less sharp in sub-Saharan Africa. The only region where Muslim population growth is accelerating through 2020 is the Americas, largely because of immigration. (For details, see the charts on population growth in the sections of this report on Asia-Pacific, Middle-East-North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Europe and the Americas.)

Falling birth rates eventually will lead to significant shifts in the age structure of Muslim populations. While the worldwide Muslim population today is relatively young, the so-called Muslim “youth bulge” — the high percentage of Muslims in their teens and 20s — peaked around the year 2000 and is now declining. (See the Age Structure section of the full report for more details.)

In 1990, more than two-thirds of the total population of Muslim-majority countries was under age 30. Today, people under age 30 make up about 60% of the population of these countries, and by 2030 they are projected to fall to about 50%.

At the same time, many Muslim-majority countries will have aging populations; between 2010 and 2030, the share of people ages 30 and older in these countries is expected to rise from 40% to 50%, and the share of people ages 60 and older is expected nearly to double, from 7% to 12%. Muslim-majority countries, however, are not the only ones with aging populations. As birth rates drop and people live longer all around the globe, the population of the entire world is aging. As a result, the global Muslim population will remain comparatively youthful for decades to come. The median age in Muslim-majority countries, for example, rose from 19 in 1990 to 24 in 2010 and is expected to climb to 30 by 2030. But it will still be lower than the median age in North America, Europe and other more-developed regions, which rose from age 34 to 40 between 1990 and 2010 and is projected to be age 44 in 2030. By that year, nearly three-in-ten of the world’s youth and young adults — 29.1% of people ages 15-29 — are projected to be Muslims, up from 25.8% in 2010 and 20.0% in 1990.

Other key findings of the study include:

Worldwide

• Sunni Muslims will continue to make up an overwhelming majority of Muslims in 2030 (87%- 90%). The portion of the world’s Muslims who are Shia may decline slightly, largely because of relatively low fertility in Iran, where more than a third of the world’s Shia Muslims live.

• As of 2010, about three-quarters of the world’s Muslims (74.1%) live in the 49 countries in which Muslims make up a majority of the population. More than a fifth of all Muslims (23.3%) live in non-Muslim-majority countries in the developing world. About 3% of the world’s Muslims live in more-developed regions, such as Europe, North America, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

• Fertility rates in Muslim-majority countries are closely related to women’s education levels. In the eight Muslim-majority countries where girls generally receive the fewest years of schooling, the average fertility rate (5.0 children per woman) is more than double the average rate (2.3 children per woman) in the nine Muslim-majority countries where girls generally receive the most years of schooling. One exception is the Palestinian territories, where the average fertility rate (4.5 children per woman) is relatively high even though a girl born there today can expect to receive 14 years of formal education.

• Fewer than half (47.8%) of married women ages 15-49 in Muslim-majority countries use some form of birth control. By comparison, in non-Muslim-majority, less-developed countries nearly two-thirds (63.3%) of all married women in that age group use some form of birth control.

Asia-Pacific

• Nearly three-in-ten people living in the Asia-Pacific region in 2030 (27.3%) will be Muslim, up from about a quarter in 2010 (24.8%) and roughly a fifth in 1990 (21.6%).

• Muslims make up only about 2% of the population in China, but because the country is so populous, its Muslim population is expected to be the 19th largest in the world in 2030.

Middle East-North Africa

• The Middle East-North Africa will continue to have the highest percentage of Muslim-majority countries. Of the 20 countries and territories in this region, all but Israel are projected to be at least 50% Muslim in 2030, and 17 are expected to have a population that is more than 75% Muslim in 2030, with Israel, Lebanon and Sudan (as currently demarcated) being the only exceptions.

• Nearly a quarter (23.2%) of Israel’s population is expected to be Muslim in 2030, up from 17.7% in 2010 and 14.1% in 1990. During the past 20 years, the Muslim population in Israel has more than doubled, growing from 0.6 million in 1990 to 1.3 million in 2010. The Muslim population in Israel (including Jerusalem but not the West Bank and Gaza) is expected to reach 2.1 million by 2030.

• Egypt, Algeria and Morocco currently have the largest Muslim populations (in absolute numbers) in the Middle East-North Africa. By 2030, however, Iraq is expected to have the second-largest Muslim population in the region — exceeded only by Egypt — largely because Iraq has a higher fertility rate than Algeria or Morocco.

Sub-Saharan Africa

• The Muslim population in sub-Saharan Africa is projected to grow by nearly 60% in the next 20 years, from 242.5 million in 2010 to 385.9 million in 2030. Because the region’s non- Muslim population also is growing at a rapid pace, Muslims are expected to make up only a slightly larger share of the region’s population in 2030 (31.0%) than they do in 2010 (29.6%).

• Various surveys give differing figures for the size of religious groups in Nigeria, which appears to have roughly equal numbers of Muslims and Christians in 2010. By 2030, Nigeria is expected to have a slight Muslim majority (51.5%).

Europe

• In 2030, Muslims are projected to make up more than 10% of the total population in 10 European countries: Kosovo (93.5%), Albania (83.2%), Bosnia-Herzegovina (42.7%), Republic of Macedonia (40.3%), Montenegro (21.5%), Bulgaria (15.7%), Russia (14.4%), Georgia (11.5%), France (10.3%) and Belgium (10.2%).

• Russia will continue to have the largest Muslim population (in absolute numbers) in Europe in 2030. Its Muslim population is expected to rise from 16.4 million in 2010 to 18.6 million in 2030. The growth rate for the Muslim population in Russia is projected to be 0.6% annually over the next two decades. By contrast, Russia’s non-Muslim population is expected to shrink by an average of 0.6% annually over the same period.

• France had an expected net influx of 66,000 Muslim immigrants in 2010, primarily from North Africa. Muslims accounted for an estimated two-thirds (68.5%) of all new immigrants to France in the past year. Spain was expected to see a net gain of 70,000 Muslim immigrants in 2010, but they account for a much smaller portion of all new immigrants to Spain (13.1%). The U.K.’s net inflow of Muslim immigrants in the past year (nearly 64,000) was forecast to be nearly as large as France’s. More than a quarter (28.1%) of all new immigrants to the U.K. in 2010 are estimated to be Muslim.

The Americas

• The number of Muslims in Canada is expected to nearly triple in the next 20 years, from about 940,000 in 2010 to nearly 2.7 million in 2030. Muslims are expected to make up 6.6% of Canada’s total population in 2030, up from 2.8% today. Argentina is expected to have the third-largest Muslim population in the Americas, after the U.S. and Canada. Argentina, with about 1 million Muslims in 2010, is now in second place, behind the U.S.

• Children under age 15 make up a relatively small portion of the U.S. Muslim population today. Only 13.1% of Muslims are in the 0-14 age group. This reflects the fact that a large proportion of Muslims in the U.S. are newer immigrants who arrived as adults. But by 2030, many of these immigrants are expected to start families. If current trends continue, the numbers of U.S. Muslims under age 15 will more than triple, from fewer than 500,000 in 2010 to 1.8 million in2030. The number of Muslim children ages 0-4 living in the U.S. is expected to increase from fewer than 200,000 in 2010 to more than 650,000 in 2030.

• About two-thirds of the Muslims in the U.S. today (64.5%) are first-generation immigrants (foreign-born), while slightly more than a third (35.5%) were born in the U.S. By 2030, however, more than four-in-ten of the Muslims in the U.S. (44.9%) are expected to be native-born.

• The top countries of origin for Muslim immigrants to the U.S. in 2009 were Pakistan and Bangladesh. They are expected to remain the top countries of origin for Muslim immigrants to the U.S. in 2030.

About the Report
This report makes demographic projections. Projections are not the same as predictions. Rather, they are estimates built on current population data and assumptions about demographic trends; they are what will happen if the current data are accurate and the trends play out as expected. But many things — immigration laws, economic conditions, natural disasters, armed conflicts, scientific discoveries, social movements and political upheavals, to name just a few — can shift demographic trends in unforeseen ways, which is why this report adheres to a modest time frame, looking just 20 years down the road. Even so, there is no guarantee that Muslim populations will grow at precisely the rates anticipated in this report and not be affected by unforeseen events, such as political decisions on immigration quotas or national campaigns to encourage larger or smaller families.

The projections presented in this report are the medium figures in a range of three scenarios — high, medium and low — generated from models commonly used by demographers around the world to forecast changes in population size and composition. The models follow what is known as the cohort-component method, which starts with a baseline population (in this case, the current number of Muslims in each country) divided into groups, or cohorts, by age and sex. Each cohort is projected into the future by adding likely gains — new births and immigrants — and subtracting likely losses – deaths and emigrants. These calculations were made by the Pew Forum’s demographers, who collaborated with researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria on the projections for the United States and European countries. (For more details, see Appendix A: Methodology.)

The current population data that underpin this report were culled from the best sources available on Muslims in each of the 232 countries and territories for which the U.N. Population Division provides general population estimates. Many of these baseline statistics were published in the Pew Forum’s 2009 report, Mapping the Global Muslim Population, which acquired and analyzed about 1,500 sources of data — including census reports, large-scale demographic studies and general population surveys — to estimate the number of Muslims in every country and territory. (For a list of sources, see Appendix B: Data Sources by Country.)

All of those estimates have been updated for 2010, and some have been substantially revised. (To find the current estimate and projections for a particular region or country, see Muslim Population by Country, 1990-2030.) Since many countries are conducting national censuses in 2010-11, more data are likely to emerge over the next few years, but a cut-off must be made at some point; this report is based on information available as of mid-2010. To the extent possible, the report provides data for decennial years — 1990, 2000, 2010, 2020 and 2030. In some cases, however, the time periods vary because data is available only for certain years or in five-year increments (e.g., 2010-15 or 2030-35).

The definition of Muslim in this report is very broad. The goal is to count all groups and individuals who self-identify as Muslims. This includes Muslims who may be secular or nonobservant. No attempt is made in this report to measure how religious Muslims are or to forecast levels of religiosity (or secularism) in the decades ahead.

Find the full report including interactive maps and sortable data tables at pewforum.org.

 _{1. The seven countries projected to rise above 1 million Muslims by 2030 are: Belgium, Canada, Congo, Djibouti, Guinea Bissau, Netherlands and Togo.}

The Census Bureau today released five sets of population estimates for the nation as of April 1 — but not from the soon-to-be-released 2010 Census count. The estimates are based on an alternative measurement technique, called demographic analysis, that agency officials say employs plausible assumptions about population change. The demographic analysis estimates range from a low of 305.7 million to a high of 312.7 million. The first numbers from the 2010 Census, which will include a national population total and state totals for reapportionment purposes, will be released later this month.

At a news conference today, Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said the five different estimates all make “plausible assumptions.” The analysis will be among three major tools used by the bureau to evaluate the quality of the 2010 Census. The other two include quality measures such as mail return rates from the census itself, and a post-census quality-check survey for which results will be released in 2012.

The demographic analysis methodology is based mainly on use of birth, death, immigration and Medicare records since the 2000 Census. For the population under age 65, bureau officials subtracted the number of deaths from the number of births, added in immigration and subtracted emigration. For the population ages 65 and older, the analysis relied mainly on Medicare enrollment data, supplemented by estimates from the Current Population Survey of older Americans not enrolled in Medicare.

The data exercise sounds deceptively simple, but as this technical paper demonstrates, Census Bureau experts had to make numerous choices based on sometimes-incomplete information. The release of five different sets of estimates reflects a lack of certainty about the data on which the estimates were based. Each of the five sets is based on a different estimate of net international migration over the past decade. The lowest and highest estimates also are based on different estimates of births, deaths and the 65-and-older population. The range of the estimates is 7 million people, of which 5 million is due to differing net immigration estimates, especially counts of unauthorized immigrants.

Bureau officials have used this alternative technique for decades to check the quality of the door-to-door census count, and to improve the accuracy of the annual population estimates between census counts. A decade ago, the bureau’s initial total derived by demographic analysis was markedly lower than its 2000 Census count — 279.6 million, compared with 281.4 million. A major reason was that demographic analysis had underestimated unauthorized immigration; there also were issues with birth statistics and race classification. For 2010, bureau officials attempted to improve their immigration estimates by analyzing data from the American Community Survey, which went fully operational in mid-decade, and by consulting outside experts.

In addition to the national population totals, the five series of estimates also include numbers for men and women, for each single year of age, for race groups (only black and non-black because of data limitations), and for the Hispanic population under age 20 (again, because of data limitations, the full Hispanic population was not estimated). There are no estimates for states or other geographic units below the national level, again because of limited data.

Although the estimates released today are not 2010 Census numbers, bureau officials will use them to help evaluate the quality of the census count. In particular, after detailed race, age and gender numbers from the census come out in 2011, demographers will examine any patterns of difference between the census counts and demographic analysis estimates to see how both measurements can be improved.

At a news conference, Groves emphasized that the estimates had been developed independently of the 2010 Census counts; the demographic analysis team was “sequestered,” he said, from the work on 2010 Census totals. The demographic analysis released today also was not based on the annual population estimates that use a similar methodology; the last national estimate said that as of July 2009, the U.S. population was 307 million.

Read more about the Census at All things Census.

A comprehensive demographic study of more than 200 countries finds that there are 1.57 billion Muslims of all ages living in the world today, representing 23% of an estimated 2009 world population of 6.8 billion.

While Muslims are found on all five inhabited continents, more than 60% of the global Muslim population is in Asia and about 20% is in the Middle East and North Africa. However, the Middle East-North Africa region has the highest percentage of Muslim-majority countries. Indeed, more than half of the 20 countries and territories¹ in that region have populations that are approximately 95% Muslim or greater.

More than 300 million Muslims, or one-fifth of the world’s Muslim population, live in countries where Islam is not the majority religion. These minority Muslim populations are often quite large. India, for example, has the third-largest population of Muslims worldwide. China has more Muslims than Syria, while Russia is home to more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined.

Of the total Muslim population, 10-13% are Shia Muslims and 87-90% are Sunni Muslims. Most Shias (between 68% and 80%) live in just four countries: Iran, Pakistan, India and Iraq.

These are some of the key findings of Mapping the Global Muslim Population: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Muslim Population, a new study by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life. The report offers the most up-to-date and fully sourced estimates of the size and distribution of the worldwide Muslim population, including sectarian identity.

Previously published estimates of the size of the global Muslim population have ranged widely, from 1 billion to 1.8 billion.² But these commonly quoted estimates often have appeared without citations to specific sources or explanations of how the figures were generated.

The Pew Forum report is based on the best available data for 232 countries and territories. Pew Forum researchers, in consultation with nearly 50 demographers and social scientists at universities and research centers around the world, acquired and analyzed about 1,500 sources, including census reports, demographic studies and general population surveys, to arrive at these figures — the largest project of its kind to date. (See methodology for more detail.)

The Pew Forum’s estimate of the Shia population (10-13%) is in keeping with previous estimates, which generally have been in the range of 10-15%. Some previous estimates, however, have placed the number of Shias at nearly 20% of the world’s Muslim population.³ Readers should bear in mind that the figures given in this report for the Sunni and Shia populations are less precise than the figures for the overall Muslim population. Data on sectarian affiliation have been infrequently collected or, in many countries, not collected at all. Therefore, the Sunni and Shia numbers reported here are expressed as broad ranges and should be treated as approximate.

These findings on the world Muslim population lay the foundation for a forthcoming study by the Pew Forum, scheduled to be released in 2010, that will estimate growth rates among Muslim populations worldwide and project Muslim populations into the future. The Pew Forum plans to launch a similar study of global Christianity in 2010 as well. The Pew Forum also plans to conduct in-depth public opinion surveys on the intersection of religion and public life around the world, starting with a 19-country survey of sub-Saharan Africa scheduled to be released later this year. These forthcoming studies are part of a larger effort — the Global Religious Futures Project, jointly funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation — that aims to increase people’s understanding of religion around the world.

Continue reading the full report online, including a series of interactive demographic maps, or download a complete PDF of the report at pewforum.org.

_{1 For a definition of “territories,” see the methodology.
2 See, for example, CIA World Factbook; Foreign Policy magazine, May 2007; Who Speaks for Islam: What a Billion Muslims Really Think, 2008; Adherents.com; and IslamicPopulation.com.
3 See, for example, IslamicWeb.com; “Shia Muslims in the Middle East,” Council on Foreign Relations, June 2006; and “The Revival of Shia Islam,” Vali Nasr speaking at a Pew Forum event, July 2006.}