Hackett said this is partially explained by the fact that women tend to have higher levels of religious commitment than men.

A significant portion of those converts will likely become unaffiliated, a group that's expected to grow by a net total of roughly 61 million purely due to people leaving their religions (as opposed to via higher birth rates, etc.).Īs the graph below shows, the majority of those who leave Christianity will be men they're expected to account for roughly 60 percent of those who choose to leave the religion. Despite Christianity's tradition of evangelism, the faith is expected to lose a net total of about 66 million people around the world due to conversions, accounting for both those who convert into the faith and those who convert out. In Europe and beyond, age, fertility rates, and migration are the most important factors in projected population changes, but religious conversion also plays a minor role in the results. But given that Islam's growing presence has already contributed to significant social and political conflict across the continent, this change could be consequential. Muslims will still be a minority in the region, accounting for roughly 10 percent of Europe's population by 2050. In general, the continent's total population is expected to shrink.Įurope's population of Muslims, however, is expected to get much larger, growing by 28 million people over four decades. In 2010, 75 percent of Europe's population was Christian by 2050, that percentage is expected to be closer to 65. Now, it's the only region where the absolute number of Christians is expected to decline in the coming years.

This is partly because the Jewish population is so concentrated, Hackett said: Roughly 80 percent of Jews live in Israel or the United States, both highly developed countries.īut perhaps the most significant finding is that Muslims may gradually overtake Christians as the world's largest religious group in the coming decades.Ĭonsider the situation in Europe, where Christianity has historically been dominant. Jews, on the other hand, will live the longest in 2050, the group's life expectancy will be 85, compared with 75 for Muslims. While their life expectancy will likely rise over the next four decades, on average, Muslims will still die younger than members of any other religion, including folk religions. A majority of Muslims will still live in Asia and the Pacific region, as they do now (even though Islam is the predominant religion of the Middle East, only one in five Muslims live there). The Muslim population, for example, is expected to grow twice as fast as the rest of the world's population between now and 2050, largely because Muslims tend to be young and have high fertility rates.

They advise readers to interpret the data with caution-there's a page-long section called 'disclaimers'-but offer insight into what demographers know best: how births, deaths, and migration define peoples over time. Researchers looked at census data, surveys, and population registers for 234 countries to estimate the future sizes of the world's religious groups. 'In the process of gathering all the data to think about the future of religion in the world, we learn about differences between religious groups that exist today,' said Conrad Hackett, the lead demographer on the massive new report.

World religion population percentage