Many religions are heavily concentrated in a few countries

Half of the world’s population lives in just seven countries. But some of the world’s religious groups are even more concentrated than that.

For many years, demographers at Pew Research Center have been studying the characteristics of religious groups, including Buddhists, Christians, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, and the religiously unaffiliated (sometimes called “nones”).

While Christians and Muslims are more widely distributed around the world, the majority of the other groups’ populations reside in three or fewer nations, according to estimates from our latest report on the global religious landscape. All figures in this analysis are based on 2020 data.

How we did this

Pew Research Center conducted this analysis as part of our ongoing research on how the world’s religious composition is changing.

Our religious composition estimates were first published in our report “How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020.” That report is based on more than 2,700 sources of data, including national censuses, large-scale demographic surveys, general population surveys and population registers. This is the latest in an ongoing series of reports produced by Pew Research Center as part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which analyzes religious change and its impact on societies around the world. Funding for the Global Religious Futures project comes from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation (grant 62287). This publication does not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation.

Hindus

No religion we analyze is more heavily concentrated in one country than Hinduism, which has remained close to its geographic origins. More than nine-in-ten of the world’s 1.2 billion Hindus (95%) live in India, which is home to 18% of the world’s overall population.

The religiously unaffiliated

While there continues to be much attention paid to the growth of the religiously unaffiliated population in Europe and North America, two-thirds of the world’s 1.9 billion religious “nones” (67%) live in one Asian country: China. This country accounts for 18% of the overall global population.

Jews

Nearly half of the world’s 15 million Jews (46%) live in Israel, while around four-in-ten (39%) live in the United States. While 85% of all Jews live in these two countries, together they account for only 4% of the world’s people.

Buddhists

A majority of the world’s Buddhists are concentrated in three Asian countries: Thailand, China and Myanmar (also called Burma). Together, they are home to 52% of all Buddhists and 20% of the world’s overall population.

Muslims

Many people may associate Islam with the Middle East and North Africa, but only 20% of the world’s Muslims live there. In fact, Egypt is the only country in the region that ranks among the six largest Muslim populations. Indonesia, Pakistan, India, Bangladesh and Nigeria all have larger Muslim populations than Egypt.

The six nations with the largest Muslim population together account for 52% of the world’s 2 billion Muslims, yet these countries comprise only 30% of the world’s population.

Christians

Compared with the other religious groups analyzed, Christians are the most spread out around the world. It takes a minimum of 12 countries to total 51% of the world’s 2.3 billion Christians. These 12 countries (the U.S., Brazil, Mexico, the Philippines, Russia, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, South Africa, Italy, Germany and Kenya) make up 21% of the world’s overall population.

Note: This is an update of an analysis originally published on Aug. 27, 2014. Joseph Naylor, a former advanced analytics intern at Pew Research Center, contributed to the original analysis.