How the U.S. compares with the rest of the world on religious restrictions
The U.S. ranks in the middle range of the nearly 200 countries we analyzed to assess restrictions on religion and social hostilities toward religious groups.
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Government Restrictions by Region The median level of government restrictions on religion increased in two of the five regions (Asia-Pacific and sub-Saharan Africa) and decreased in two regions (Middle East-North Africa and Europe). It stayed the same in the Americas. In the latest year studied, the Middle East and North Africa continued to have the […]
More than nine-in-ten people in the Middle East and North Africa were Muslim as of 2010 (93%), and the share of the region’s population that is Muslim is expected to be slightly higher in 2050 (94%). The Middle East-North Africa region’s Muslim population is expected to grow by 74% from 2010 to 2050, from 317 […]
Survey Report Before you read the report, test your own News IQ by taking the interactive knowledge quiz. The short quiz tests your knowledge of questions recently asked in a national poll. After completing the quiz, you can compare your score with the general public and with people like yourself. Take the Quiz The latest […]
This appendix details the methods used in this study to project changes in the population size and geographic distribution of eight major religious groups from 2010 to 2050. It is organized in five sections. The first section explains how the baseline (2010) religious composition estimates were derived. The second section describes how key input data […]
In addition to looking at the harassment of specific religious groups, this report, for the first time, looks at the prevalence of restrictions and hostilities that tend to target religious minorities. To measure the extent of these restrictions and hostilities, Pew Research identified three measures on the Government Restrictions Index and three on the Social […]