Global Religious Demography: New Population Estimates and Age Data

This paper describes the world’s major religious populations in 2010. We provide new population estimates for eight religious groups: Christians, Muslims, the religiously unaffiliated, Hindus, Buddhists, members of folk or traditional religions, Jews and other world religions. We are the first to reveal median age data for each religion. These results are the product of a multi-year, international collaboration to evaluate and standardize data from thousands of sources to produce the best available social scientific estimates of religious populations in 232 countries and territories of the world.