Global Population Projections by Religion: 2010–2050 (original) (raw)
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Yearbook of International Religious Demography 2014
The Yearbook of International Religious Demography presents an annual snapshot of the state of religious statistics around the world. Every year large amounts of data are collected through censuses, surveys, polls, religious communities, scholars, and a host of other sources. These data are collated and analyzed by research centers and scholars around the world. Large amounts of data appear in analyzed form in the World Religion Database (Brill), aiming at a researcher’s audience. The Yearbook presents data in sets of tables and scholarly articles spanning social science, demography, history, and geography. Each issue offers findings, sources, methods, and implications surrounding international religious demography. Each year an assessment is made of new data made available since the previous issue of the yearbook.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2014
Religion is a fundamental characteristic of humankind. While it is possible to find commonalities in different religions across history, peoples, languages, and cultures, it is also true that "religion" encompasses a dizzying array of rituals, practices, doctrines, sacred spaces, and personalities. This diversity is found even within major religions. For the purposes of creating a taxonomy it is possible to refer to seven or eight major religions, and to approximately 10,000 total different religions. 1 At the same time, a significant minority of people claim no religion. Even in the past 100 years this "group" has waxed and waned as a percentage of the world's population. Any serious treatment of religious demography must take both religionists and non-religionists into account. Viewing the world's religions on a global scale reveals a striking demographic reality. 2 Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and even agnostics live side-by-side in many countries, often showing diversity within a province or state. 3 These huge blocs represent to some extent cultural realities (for example, Arabs as Muslims, South Asians as Hindus), but each of these religions also has enormous cultural diversity (for example, most Muslims are not Arabs). This clustering gives rise to other seeming contradictions as well. For example, the Muslim world is perceived as stronger at its core than on the periphery (e.g., Muslims constitute a higher percentage of the population in Saudi Arabia than in Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population). Yet, at the same time, the majority of Muslims live in Asia, not the Middle East or North Africa. Chinese folk-religionists are an absolute majority in no country or province, although they make up over 6% of the global population; most live in China (which is majority agnostic). Conversely, Sikhism and Judaism-although less than 0.3% of the global total each-have local majorities in the Indian state of Punjab and in Israel, respectively. India is also notable for having the highest number of different provincial majority religions (five) in a single country.
The Global Religious Landscape Collaborating Researchers Table of Contents
2012
to generate up-to-date and fully sourced estimates of the current size and projected growth of the world's major religious groups. As part of this multi-phase project, the Pew Forum has assembled data on the size and geographic distribution of eight major religious groups-including the religiously unafliated-as of. These estimates are presented in this report. The estimates are based on a country-by-country analysis of data from more than , censuses, surveys and ofcial population registers that were collected, evaluated and standardized by the staff of the Pew Forum over the past several years. Researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Laxenburg, Austria, and at the Vienna Institute of Demography in Vienna, Austria, collaborated on the analysis. This effort is part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which analyzes religious change and its impact on societies around the world. The project is jointly and generously funde...
International Journal of Religious Freedom, 2013
Religion is a fundamental characteristic of humankind. While it is possible to find commonalities in different religions across history, peoples, languages, and cultures, it is also true that "religion" encompasses a dizzying array of rituals, practices, doctrines, sacred spaces, and personalities. This diversity is found even within major religions. For the purposes of creating a taxonomy it is possible to refer to seven or eight major religions, and to approximately 10,000 total different religions. 1 At the same time, a significant minority of people claim no religion. Even in the past 100 years this "group" has waxed and waned as a percentage of the world's population. Any serious treatment of religious demography must take both religionists and non-religionists into account. Viewing the world's religions on a global scale reveals a striking demographic reality. 2 Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, and even agnostics live side-by-side in many countries, often showing diversity within a province or state. 3 These huge blocs represent to some extent cultural realities (for example, Arabs as Muslims, South Asians as Hindus), but each of these religions also has enormous cultural diversity (for example, most Muslims are not Arabs). This clustering gives rise to other seeming contradictions as well. For example, the Muslim world is perceived as stronger at its core than on the periphery (e.g., Muslims constitute a higher percentage of the population in Saudi Arabia than in Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population). Yet, at the same time, the majority of Muslims live in Asia, not the Middle East or North Africa. Chinese folk-religionists are an absolute majority in no country or province, although they make up over 6% of the global population; most live in China (which is majority agnostic). Conversely, Sikhism and Judaism-although less than 0.3% of the global total each-have local majorities in the Indian state of Punjab and in Israel, respectively. India is also notable for having the highest number of different provincial majority religions (five) in a single country.
The Future of World Religions: Population Growth Projections, 2010-2050
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 remain the largest religious group, but Islam will grow faster than any other major religion. If current trends continue, by 2050 … The number of Muslims will nearly equal the number of Christians around the world. Atheists, agnostics and other people who do not affiliate with any religion -though increasing in countries such as the United States and France -will make up a declining share of the world's total population. The global Buddhist population will be about the same size it was in 2010, while the Hindu and Jewish populations will be larger than they are today.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2008
The international religious data in the World Christian Database (WCD), and its print predecessor, the World Christian Encyclopedia (WCE) have been used frequently in academic studies and the popular press. Scholars have raised questions about the WCD's estimates categories, and potential bias, but the data have not yet been systematically assessed. We test the reliability of the WCD by comparing its religious composition estimates to four other data sources (World Values Survey, Pew Global Assessment Project, CIA World Factbook, and the U.S. Department of State), finding that estimates are highly correlated. In comparing the WCD estimates for Islamic countries and American Christian adherents with local data sources, we identify specific groups for which estimates differ. In addition, we discuss countries where the data sets provide inconsistent religious estimates. Religious composition estimates in the WCD are generally plausible and consistent with other data sets. The WCD also includes comprehensive nonreligious data. Recommendations regarding the use of the WCD are given.
The Demography of Religions and their Changing Distribution in the World
2012
The demographic approach and religion Demography studies the changing size and composition of a population in a quantitative way. A population (Greek: 'demos') is usually defined as comprising all the people in a given territory or political entity (from a city to a province to a nation to the world population). A population defined in such a way can only change through three forces: births, deaths and migration. These are called the three fundamental components of demographic change. Since the intensity of these forces differs greatly by age and gender, most demographic studies stratify the populations by these two basic demographic dimensions. This structure by age and gender is well illustrated through population pyramids which plot women on the right and men on the left side, sorted by age (as an example, see Figure 1, p. 681). Demographic models can also project populations for several decades into the future. This high predictive power in demography-as compared to many other social and economic issues-is due to the fact that the human life span is 70-80 years in most parts of the world and, if we know, e.g., the number of 10-year-old girls today, we have a good basis for projecting the number of 70-year-old women 60 years into the future. We only have to adjust for assumed future mortality and migration rates. To project the size of cohorts that have not yet been born today, we also must make assumptions about future fertility rates. Hence, to forecast total population size we need to make assumptions about likely future trends in age-and genderspecific birth, death and migration rates. This is where a substantive assess
Global processes present a challenge for scholarly work on religion, necessitating new concepts, theoretical and analytical models, intellectual sensitivity, and imagination. This calls for focusing on (1) cross-border interpenetration of religious organizations, beliefs, and practices; (2) variations in the potential for religious beliefs and institutions to be transported; and (3) the use of multiple frames of reference to examine the dispersion of religious cultures and communities. A presidential panel presents the need for generating new research questions, improving measurement tools, and updating methodological techniques so that social scientists of religion accurately and authentically portray the nature and expression of religion in the 21st century.