Pew studies and analyzes issues at the intersection of religion and public affairs by conducting surveys, demographic analyses, and other research about the practice of religion and its place in American life.
Recent work includes a major portrait of Jews in America and interviews with 38,000 Muslims around the globe to provide a more complete understanding of the beliefs and political views of members of the world’s second- largest religion.
September 21, 2021MethodologyThis section describes the sources and variables used for the analyses in this report. It explains known limitations of the data. Next, it outlines the strengths and weaknesses of the map used, as well as possible alternatives and reasons why data is shown as missing in some areas. Finally, the multilevel mixed-effects modeling used in […]
September 21, 20212. Causes of religious changeThe religious composition of the global population is always in flux. For example, the share of Buddhists worldwide is shrinking because of their low average fertility rate, and Christians are declining in the U.S. and Western Europe as more people leave organized religion. Demographers attribute changes in the size of religious populations to three main […]
September 21, 2021Religious Composition of IndiaAll major religious groups in India have shown sharp declines in their fertility rates, limiting change in the country’s religious composition since 1951. Meanwhile, fertility differences between India’s religious groups are generally much smaller than they used to be.
September 21, 20213. Religious demography of Indian states and territoriesAs is the case in most countries, population density varies widely across India. The most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, recorded close to 200 million (20 crore) inhabitants in the 2011 census, while the southern archipelago of Lakshadweep had fewer than 100,000 (1,00,000 in India’s number system). Adherents of religious groups also are not evenly distributed […]
September 21, 2021AcknowledgmentsThis report was produced by Pew Research Center as part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which analyzes religious change and its impact on societies around the world. Funding for the Global Religious Futures project comes from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation. This report is a collaborative effort based on […]
September 21, 20211. Population growth and religious compositionIndia’s population has more than tripled in the six decades following Partition, from 361 million (36.1 crore) people in the 1951 census to more than 1.2 billion (120 crore) in 2011. As of 2020, India gains roughly 1 million (10 lakh) inhabitants each month, putting it on course to surpass China as the world’s most […]
July 8, 2021MethodologyThis study is based on an analysis of 12,832 sermons, homilies or worship services delivered between Aug. 31 and Nov. 8, 2020, and collected from the websites of 2,146 churches found via the Google Places application programming interface (API), a tool that provides information about establishments, geographic locations or points of interest listed on Google […]
July 8, 2021AcknowledgmentsThis report was produced by Pew Research Center as part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious Futures project, which analyzes religious change and its impact on societies around the world. Funding for the Global Religious Futures project comes from The Pew Charitable Trusts and the John Templeton Foundation. This report is a collaborative effort based on […]
