How the global religious landscape changed from 2010 to 2020
- Susie Weldon
- 6 minutes ago
- 3 min read
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.
But while some religious groups grew, others did not keep pace with global population growth, and the total global percentage of people affliiated with a faith or belief dropped from 84% to 75.8%, according to the report, How the Global Religious Landscape Changed from 2010 to 2010.
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 Pew report says 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.
Here are the figures for each faith/belief category.
Christians (of all denominations, counted as one group) remained the world’s biggest religious group, growing their numbers by 122 million to reach 2.3 billion people globally.
Yet, as a share of the world’s population, Christians fell 1.8 percentage points, to 28.8%.
Muslims were the fastest-growing religious group over the decade, growing twice as fast as the world's population, and remain the second largest religious group overall. The share of the world’s population that is Muslim rose by 1.8 points, to 25.6% of the total, amounting to two billion people worldwide.
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. Their share increased to 24.2% of the world's population, comprising 1.9 billion people globally and amounting to the third biggest group.
The number of Hindus worldwide grew 12% from 2010 to 2020, rising from a little less than 1.1 billion to nearly 1.2 billion people in 2020. But since non-Hindus grew at about the same rate, Hindus remained stable as a percentage of the global population at 14.9%. They are the fourth biggest faith tradition worldwide.
The fifth biggest religious group, Buddhism, was 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 globally. As a share of the global population, Buddhists slipped by 0.8 points, to 4.1%.
The share of Baha’is, Daoists, Jains, Sikhs, adherents of folk religions and numerous other groups combined expanded in tandem with the rest of the world, holding steady at 2.2% of the global population.
The estimated numbers of this 'other religions' category grew worldwide to 172 million people globally.
The smallest group in the Pew study, Judaism, held steady as a share of the world's population.
The number of Jews worldwide grew by nearly one million, reaching 14.8 million people in total, and representing about 0.2% of the world’s population.
Other key findings
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.
Although the global Muslim population grew at a faster rate than any other major religion between 2010 and 2020, this was largely because of overall population growth in the countries where Muslims are concentrated.
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, there are a bigger proportion of 'nones' in Japan – 57% of all Japanese are religiously unaffiliated – than in the US, 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.
These are among the key findings of a Pew Research Center report on 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.