Statistics Reveal Over 75% of the World is Religious with Christians at Over 2.3 Billion as the Largest Group According to a Newly Released 10 Year Study

A newly released 10 year study on "How the Global Religious Landscape Changed From 2010 to 2020" revealed some important information about religion around the world.

The world’s population expanded from 2010 to 2020, and so did most religious groups, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of more than 2,700 censuses and surveys. Here are 7 Key points to know about:

1. Christians remained the world’s biggest religious group.  Christians (of all denominations, counted as one group) from 2010 to 2020 grew by 122 million, reaching 2.3 billion.

The number of Muslims increased by 347 million – the world’s population that is Muslim rose by 1.8 points, to 25.6%.

Buddhists were the only major religious group that had fewer people in 2020 than a decade earlier. The number of Buddhists worldwide dropped by 19 million, declining to 324 million. As a share of the global population, Buddhists slipped by 0.8 points, to 4.1%.

Hindus grew at about the same rate as the world’s overall population. The number of Hindus rose by 126 million, reaching 1.2 billion.

As a proportion of the global population, Hindus held steady at 14.9%.

The number of Jews worldwide grew by nearly 1 million, reaching 14.8 million.

In percentage terms, Jews were the smallest group in the study, representing about 0.2% of the world’s population. All other religions combined (including Baha’is, Daoists, Jains, Sikhs, adherents of folk religions and numerous other groups) share of the global population held steady at 2.2%.

2. People with no religious affiliation – who are sometimes called “nones” – were the only category aside from Muslims that grew as a percentage of the world’s population. The number of religiously unaffiliated people rose by 270 million, reaching 1.9 billion.

The share of “nones” climbed nearly a full percentage point, to 24.2%.

3. All together, 75.8% of the world’s people identified with a religion as of 2020. The remaining 24.2% did not identify with any religion, making people with no religious affiliation the third-largest group in this study, after Christians and Muslims.

Since 2010, the share of the global population that has any religious affiliation has declined by nearly 1 percentage point (from 76.7%) while the share without an affiliation has risen by the same amount (from 23.3%).

The growth of religious “nones” is striking because they are at a “demographic disadvantage” – their population is relatively old, on average, with relatively low fertility rates. However, unaffiliated people continued to grow as a share of the global population because many affiliated people around the world – primarily Christians – are “switching” out of religion. 

4. Between 2010 and 2020, the share of the global population living in sub-Saharan Africa increased to 14.3% (up 2 percentage points), and the share living in the Middle East-North Africa region rose to 5.6% (up 0.5 points).

Every other region held a smaller share of the world’s population in 2020 than in 2010. These shifts are reflected in the geographic distribution of some religious groups, including Christians.

Sub-Saharan Africa is now home to the largest number of Christians, surpassing Europe. As of 2020, 30.7% of the world’s Christians live in sub-Saharan Africa, compared with 22.3% in Europe. This change was fueled by differences in the two regions’ rates of natural increase (with much higher fertility rates in Africa than in Europe), as well as by widespread Christian disaffiliation in Western Europe.

Changes within countries

5. Christians experienced a substantial change, in more countries (41) than any other religious group. In all but one case, Christians shrank as a share of the population. Most of the countries experiencing declines were in the Americas and Europe. The decreases ranged from a 5-point drop in Benin to a 14-point drop in the U.S. and a 20-point drop in Australia.

Only in Mozambique did the share of the population that is Christian grow substantially between 2010 and 2020, rising by 5 percentage points.

The United States, as of 2020, is the country with the world’s second-largest number of religiously unaffiliated people (after China), surpassing Japan.

The U.S. had roughly 101 million religious “nones” in 2020 (up 97% from a decade earlier), while Japan had 73 million (up 8%). However, the unaffiliated category continues to account for a much larger share of the total population in Japan – 57% of all Japanese are religiously unaffiliated – than in the U.S., where 30% identify as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.”

In both 2010 and 2020, China had more religiously unaffiliated people than any other country. China’s 1.3 billion unaffiliated people made up 90% of its total population in 2020.

Most countries still have Christian majorities

6. As of 2020, Christians were a majority in 120 countries and territories, down from 124 a decade earlier. Christians dropped below 50% of the population in the United Kingdom (49%), Australia (47%), France (46%) and Uruguay (44%). In each of these places, religiously unaffiliated people now account for 40% or more of the population, and smaller religious groups such as Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Jews or adherents of other religions (combined) account for 11% or less.

Over the same period, religiously unaffiliated people became a majority in the Netherlands (54%), Uruguay (52%) and New Zealand (51%), raising the number of places with an unaffiliated majority from seven to 10. (These countries joined China, North Korea, the Czech Republic, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Macao and Japan, which already had religiously unaffiliated majorities in 2010.)

7. Christians are the most geographically dispersed group. The largest share of Christians live in sub-Saharan Africa (31%), followed by the Latin America-Caribbean region (24%) and Europe (22%). This is a major geographic change since the early 1900s, when Christians in sub-Saharan Africa made up 1% of the global Christian population and two-thirds of Christians lived in Europe.

Christians have a large presence in many regions, from the most youthful (sub-Saharan Africa) to the least (Europe). Among religious groups, Christians have the median age (30.8 years) closest to the world’s overall median age (30.6).

Do people mostly live as religious majorities or minorities?

Around the world, 80% of all people live in a place in which most other people share their religious identity. People living as a religious minority in their country make up 20% of the world’s population.

These are among the key findings of a Pew Research Center of more than 2,700 censuses and surveys, including census data releases that were delayed due to the coronavirus pandemic. The study is part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which seeks to understand global religious change and its impact on societies.

Sources:

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/feature/religious-composition-by-country-2010-2020/

https://alpha.pewresearch.org/pewresearch-org/religion/feature/religious-composition-by-country-2010-2020/ (BY CONRAD HACKETT,MARCIN STONAWSKI,YUNPING TONG,STEPHANIE KRAMER,ANNE SHIANDDALIA FAHMY)