Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
This chapter uses standard demographic methods to project changes in the size of eight major religious groups from 2010-2050. The groups, presented in descending order of their 2010 size, are: Christians, Muslims, the religiously unaffiliated, Hindus, Buddhists, adherents of folk or traditional religions, members of “other religions” (consolidated into a single group) and Jews. Each […]
Media Contact: Katherine Ritchey, Communications Manager 202-419-4372, kritchey@pewresearch.org Washington, April 2, 2015 — The religious profile of the world is rapidly changing, driven primarily by differences in fertility rates and the size of youth populations among the world’s major religions, as well as by people switching faiths. Over the next four decades, Christians will continue to […]
There has been a modest drop in overall rates of belief in God and participation in religious practices. But religiously affiliated Americans are as observant as before.
Compared with most other Jewish Americans, Orthodox Jews on average are younger, get married earlier and have bigger families. They also tend to be more religiously observant and more socially and politically conservative.
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.
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 […]
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 […]