By , four out of 10 of the world's Christians will live in sub-Saharan Africa, according to our projections, for example. There's a big geographic shift underway in terms of where the world's Christians live, and the population of people who are religious increasingly are living outside of Europe, North America. We project that by the year , there will be more Muslims than [Jews] or Hindus or Buddhists in the U.
Currently, about 1 percent of the U. And that's growing because Muslims in the U. This article was originally published on July 17, It organizes the public into nine distinct groups, based on an analysis of their attitudes and values. Even in a polarized era, the survey reveals deep divisions in both partisan coalitions.
Pew Research Center now uses as the last birth year for Millennials in our work. President Michael Dimock explains why. The vast majority of U. Use this tool to compare the groups on some key topics and their demographics. About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world.
It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts. As a result, according to the Pew Research projections, by there will be near parity between Muslims 2. The global Buddhist population is expected to be fairly stable because of low fertility rates and aging populations in countries such as China, Thailand and Japan.
Similarly, the religiously unaffiliated population is projected to shrink as a percentage of the global population, even though it will increase in absolute number. In , censuses and surveys indicate, there were about 1. At the same time, however, the unaffiliated are expected to continue to increase as a share of the population in much of Europe and North America.
As the example of the unaffiliated shows, there will be vivid geographic differences in patterns of religious growth in the coming decades. One of the main determinants of that future growth is where each group is geographically concentrated today. Religions with many adherents in developing countries — where birth rates are high, and infant mortality rates generally have been falling — are likely to grow quickly. Much of the worldwide growth of Islam and Christianity, for example, is expected to take place in sub-Saharan Africa.
Globally, Muslims have the highest fertility rate, an average of 3. Hindu fertility 2. Worldwide, Jewish fertility 2. All the other groups have fertility levels too low to sustain their populations: folk religions 1. Another important determinant of growth is the current age distribution of each religious group — whether its adherents are predominantly young, with their prime childbearing years still ahead, or older and largely past their childbearing years.
All the remaining groups have smaller-than-average youth populations, and many of them have disproportionately large numbers of adherents over the age of In addition to fertility rates and age distributions, religious switching is likely to play a role in the growth of religious groups. But conversion patterns are complex and varied. In some countries, it is fairly common for adults to leave their childhood religion and switch to another faith. In others, changes in religious identity are rare, legally cumbersome or even illegal.
The Pew Research Center projections attempt to incorporate patterns in religious switching in 70 countries where surveys provide information on the number of people who say they no longer belong to the religious group in which they were raised. In the projection model, all directions of switching are possible, and they may be partially offsetting. In the United States, for example, surveys find that some people who were raised with no religious affiliation have switched to become Christians, while some who grew up as Christians have switched to become unaffiliated.
These types of patterns are projected to continue as future generations come of age. For more details on how and where switching was modeled, see the Methodology. For alternative growth scenarios involving either switching in additional countries or no switching at all, see Chapter 1. Over the coming decades, Christians are expected to experience the largest net losses from switching.
Globally, about 40 million people are projected to switch into Christianity, while million are projected to leave, with most joining the ranks of the religiously unaffiliated. See chart above.
All told, the unaffiliated are expected to add 97 million people and lose 36 million via switching, for a net gain of 61 million by Modest net gains through switching also are expected for Muslims 3 million , adherents of folk religions 3 million and members of other religions 2 million. Jews are expected to experience a net loss of about , people due to switching, while Buddhists are expected to lose nearly 3 million. International migration is another factor that will influence the projected size of religious groups in various regions and countries.
Forecasting future migration patterns is difficult, because migration is often linked to government policies and international events that can change quickly.
For this reason, many population projections do not include migration in their models. But working with researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria, the Pew Research Center has developed an innovative way of using data on past migration patterns to estimate the religious composition of migrant flows in the decades ahead. For details on how the projections were made, see Chapter 1. The impact of migration can be seen in the examples shown in the graph at the right, which compares projection scenarios with and without migration in the regions where it will have the greatest impact.
In Europe, for instance, the Muslim share of the population is expected to increase from 5. In North America, the Hindu share of the population is expected to nearly double in the decades ahead, from 0. Intermountain West Journal of Religious Studies. Faith Matters Report. Faitth Matters. Cambridge, MA. The Atlantic. Leicester: Kube Publishing. Merdeka Com. Ethical and Psychological Implications of Religious Conversion.
Review of Religious Research. The Nation. University of South Australia, Australia. London: Kegan Paul International. University of Leicester, UK. No Conversion Motifs. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. The Guardian. University of Exeter, UK. Why I Chose Islam? Princeton University Press, Princeton and Oxford. Bergen and E. Bergen Schneider: How Many Jihadits. New York: Guilford Press.
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