Religious Demographics

Only one-in-ten Chinese adults formally identify with a religion, but surveys indicate that religion plays a much bigger role in China when the definition is widened to include questions on spirituality, customs and traditional beliefs.

Catholics remain the largest religious group among Latinos in the United States, even as their share among Latino adults has steadily declined over the past decade. The share of Latinos who are religiously unaffiliated is now on par with U.S. adults overall.

Nearly a quarter of countries used force to prevent religious gatherings during the pandemic; other government restrictions and social hostilities related to religion remained fairly stable.

For more than a decade, Pew Research Center has been tracking global patterns in restrictions on religion – both those imposed by governments and hostilities committed by individuals and social groups.

With Diwali celebrations underway, here are some facts about Hindus around the world.

Whether the U.S. will continue to have a Christian majority in 2070 will depend on many factors, including religious “switching.”

Since the 1990s, large numbers of Americans have left Christianity to join the growing ranks of U.S. adults who describe their religious identity as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular.” If recent trends in religious switching continue, Christians could make up less than half of the U.S. population within a few decades.

India’s artificially wide ratio of baby boys to baby girls – which arose in the 1970s from the use of prenatal diagnostic technology to facilitate sex-selective abortions – now appears to be narrowing. Son bias has declined sharply among Sikhs, while Christians continue to have a natural balance of sons and daughters.

While the largest Christian traditions and religious “nones” can be consistently analyzed, smaller groups produce a large margin of error.

Indians accept women as political leaders, but many favor traditional gender roles in family life.