Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Christians are projected to remain the largest religious group in North America in the decades ahead, and their numbers are expected to increase from 267 million as of 2010 to 287 million in 2050.[1. numoffset=”66″ North America includes Bermuda, Canada, Greenland, the Saint Pierre and Miquelon Islands and the United States. (For the purposes of […]
Christians are expected to remain the largest religious group in Latin America and the Caribbean in the decades ahead, growing by 25% from 531 million in 2010 to 666 million in 2050.[1. numoffset=”59″ The Latin America-Caribbean region includes 46 countries and territories. For estimates of the size of religious groups in specific countries in 2010 […]
Europe is the only region projected to see a decline in its total population between 2010 and 2050. Although Christians will continue to be the largest religious group in the region, Europe’s Christian population is expected to drop by about 100 million people, falling from 553 million in 2010 to 454 million in 2050.[1. numoffset=”58″ […]
The world’s Christian population is expected to grow from 2.2 billion in 2010 to 2.9 billion in 2050.[1. numoffset=”39″ For more information on Christianity and different Christian traditions, see “Defining the Religious Groups.” See also the Pew Research Center’s December 2011 report “Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World’s Christian […]
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 […]
An estimated 405 million people – or about 6% of the world’s population – were adherents of folk or traditional religions in 2010, and that number is expected to grow to 450 million by 2050. This increase will not keep pace with overall population growth, however, and the folk religion population is expected to drop […]
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.
The number of Buddhists around the world is expected to increase between 2010 and 2030, rising from 488 million to about 511 million. However, the global Buddhist population is projected to decline after 2030, falling to 486 million by 2050, roughly where it was in 2010.[1. numoffset=”45″ For more information about Buddhism and its different […]
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 […]