Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Pew Research Center data on frequency of attendance at worship services are available in 81 countries, where an average of 48% of men and 42% of women report attending worship services at least once a week. However, the pattern of attendance varies considerably across these countries: In 23 of the 81 nations, men and women […]
Another widely accepted indicator of religious commitment is daily prayer. Pew Research Center has collected data on frequency of prayer in 84 countries. In 40 of those countries, there is no significant difference in levels of daily prayer reported by men and women. But in 43 countries (just over 50% of the total), women report […]
Wednesday, March 30, 2016 1615 L Street NW, Washington, DC 20036 This event is full View the conference program Religion influences the demographic processes that shape society, including decisions about union formation, childbearing and migration, as well as behaviors that affect mortality patterns. Likewise, demographic forces are reshaping the global religious landscape. For example, the […]
Standard lists of history’s most influential religious leaders – among them Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha) – tend to be predominantly, if not exclusively, male. Many religious groups, including Roman Catholics and Orthodox Jews, allow only men to be clergy, while others, including some denominations in the evangelical Protestant tradition, have lifted that restriction only in recent decades. Yet it often appears that the ranks of the faithful are dominated by women.
Women’s generally greater level of religiosity has been observed by scholars for decades; it has shown up in surveys going back as far as the 1930s.[34. numoffset=”34″ Gallup Jr., George H. Dec. 17, 2002. “Why Are Women More Religious?” Gallup. ] But not until the 1980s did academics begin a concerted effort to find an explanation […]
Overwhelmingly, Jews in Israel feel a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people and are proud to be Jewish. Fully 93% of Jews say they are proud of their Jewish identity and 88% say they feel a strong sense of belonging to the Jewish people. Even across the religious-secular divide that characterizes many aspects […]
Participation in several traditional forms of religious observance has declined in recent years. For example, the share of Americans who say they attend religious services at least once a week has ticked down by 3 percentage points since 2007, as has the share who say they pray every day. These declines are closely connected to […]
As of 2010, nearly a third of the world’s population identified as Christian. But if demographic trends persist, Islam will close the gap by the middle of the 21st century.
The total population in sub-Saharan Africa is expected to grow at a faster pace than in any other region in the decades ahead, more than doubling from 823 million in 2010 to 1.9 billion in 2050. As a result, the two dominant religions in the region – Christianity and Islam – both are expected to […]