5. Hindu population change
Hindus are the fourth-largest religious category in the world. Nearly all Hindus live in the Asia-Pacific region, with about 95% living in India alone.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Hindus are the fourth-largest religious category in the world. Nearly all Hindus live in the Asia-Pacific region, with about 95% living in India alone.
For each destination country, this Appendix tabulates the methods of deriving the religious composition of migrant stocks from various origin countries. We only estimate the religious composition of origin-destination country pairs that appear in the United Nations’ migrant stock database. For example, for Afghanistan, the UN only provides estimates of the number of migrants from […]
As of June 2025, the country’s foreign-born population had shrunk by more than a million people, marking its first decline since the 1960s.
The globe’s 280 million immigrants shape countries’ religious composition. Christians make up the largest share, but Jews are most likely to have migrated.
This appendix lists studied countries and territories by region. These regional categories were chosen to be consistent with our previous reports on the global demography of religion. The word “country” is used interchangeably with “countries and territories” in this report for the sake of brevity. We include countries and territories recognized as such by the […]
Read our deep-dive on religious migration trends in Europe, the Gulf Cooperation Council countries, India and the United States.
This section describes the methods used to estimate religious composition at the country level, regionally and globally; our procedures for measuring religious groups’ demographic characteristics and their religious “switching” rates; as well as methodological challenges that we considered in some countries. The final section lists the 201 countries and territories that make up each of […]
This methodology explains how we estimated the religious composition of foreign-born populations around the world. It describes the data sources we used to measure the number of migrants from each origin country living in each destination country, as well as the data sources and methods we used to estimate the religious composition of migrants. A […]
Read how demographic factors – age composition, life expectancy and fertility rates – and religious switching changed the global religious landscape.
In many places surveyed, 20% or more of all adults have left their childhood religious group. Christianity and Buddhism have had especially large losses.
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