Buddhism has a long history in America. In the 1800s, Chinese migrants working in the gold rush and building railroads brought their Buddhist beliefs and practices with them. Today, there are millions of Buddhists in the United States, including many who were born to Buddhist families and others who converted into the religion.
Here are some key facts about Buddhists in the U.S., based on Pew Research Center’s 2025 report “How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020,” the 2023-24 Religious Landscape Study (RLS) and the 2022-23 Survey of Asian Americans (SAA). (Read the Appendix for details about how we combined results from the RLS and SAA.)
There were around 4.4 million Buddhists in the U.S. in 2020. The number of Buddhists, including adults and children, rose by 22% between 2010 and 2020. That outpaced the 9% growth of the non-Buddhist population during that time.
Despite this increase, Buddhists remained a small share of the U.S. population, estimated at 1.3% in 2020.
(These estimates come from our 2025 report. Unlike estimates from the RLS and SAA, they include both adults and children.)
Most U.S. Buddhists are immigrants, and most are Asian by race. An estimated 52% of U.S. Buddhist adults were born in Asia. The most common places of birth for foreign-born U.S. Buddhist adults are Vietnam, China and Thailand.
In addition, 64% of U.S. Buddhist adults are Asian by race. Most of the rest are White (21%) or Hispanic (8%).
Related: Buddhism’s Recent Decline in Asia
Buddhist adults are much more likely than U.S. adults overall to live in the West (46% vs. 24%). In contrast, they’re less likely than U.S. adults overall to live in the Midwest (9% vs. 21%) or South (29% vs. 38%). Roughly equal shares of Buddhists and all U.S. adults live in the Northeast (16% vs. 17%).
There is a lot of turnover in the U.S. Buddhist population due to people moving into and out of the religion. By our estimates, 48% of current Buddhist adults were not raised Buddhist (in other words, they are converts). And 55% of U.S. adults who were raised Buddhist no longer identify that way (i.e., they are former Buddhists).
But because Buddhism is a small religion in the U.S., these figures translate into tiny percentages of all U.S. adults. Overall, 0.5% of all U.S. adults have converted to Buddhism, while 0.7% are former Buddhists. So there’s an overall small net loss (0.2% of all U.S. adults) from switching in both directions. This means that immigration, not religious switching, has driven the growth in the number of Buddhists.
Related: Why is Buddhism shrinking worldwide?
Around 3% of American adults consider themselves Buddhist “aside from religion,” according to the RLS. This might mean they identify with Buddhism ethnically, culturally or because of their family background. In other words, the share of U.S. adults who connect with Buddhism broadly is much bigger than the share who say Buddhism is their religion.
The 2022-23 Survey of Asian Americans (SAA) asked Asian Americans a similar question and found that 21% consider themselves close to Buddhism for reasons aside from religion. That’s almost twice the share of Asian Americans who formally identified as Buddhist in the SAA (11%).
In our focus group interviews with Asian Americans, many Buddhists – as well as non-Buddhists who consider themselves close to Buddhism – commonly described Buddhism as a “way of life” or a “lifestyle.” They contrasted this to the concept of organized religion, which they described as something that tends to be more formal and dogmatic.
Related: In Their Own Words: Cultural Connections to Religion Among Asian Americans
