Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
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The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the share of Americans who do not identify with any organized religion is growing. These changes affect all regions in the country and many demographic groups.
Media Contact: Katherine Ritchey, Communications Manager 202-419-4372, kritchey@pewresearch.org Washington, May 12, 2015 — The Christian share of the U.S. population is declining, while the number of U.S. adults who do not identify with any organized religion is growing, according to an extensive new survey by the Pew Research Center. Moreover, these changes are taking place across […]
The 2014 Religious Landscape Study has several unique strengths. Its large sample size (n=35,071) and detailed, branching set of questions about religious identity make it possible to estimate the size of a wide variety of religious groups with a high degree of precision. The large sample also makes it possible to describe the characteristics of […]
Christians remain by far the largest religious group in the United States, but the Christian share of the population has declined markedly. In the past seven years, the percentage of adults who describe themselves as Christians has dropped from 78.4% to 70.6%. Once an overwhelmingly Protestant nation, the U.S. no longer has a Protestant majority. […]
Thursday, April 23, 10 A.M. to 11:30 A.M. The Pew Research Center’s new demographic projections– the first formal forecasts using data on age, fertility, mortality, migration and religious switching for the world’s eight major religious groups – finds that the religious profile of the world is rapidly changing. By 2050, the number of Muslims around […]
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 […]
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.