Via
Pew Research:
Earlier this summer, on World
Population Day, we explained that half of the world’s population lives
in just six countries. In many cases, the world’s major religious groups
are even more concentrated, with half or more of their followers living
in one or a handful of countries. For several years, demographers at
the Pew Research Center have been studying the demographic
characteristics of eight groups: Buddhists, Christians, adherents of
folk religions, Hindus, Jews, Muslims, the religiously unaffiliated and
followers of other religions. While Christians and Muslims are more
widely distributed around the world, the other groups have a majority of
their populations in just one or two nations, according to 2010
estimates from our Global Religious Landscape report.
While there continues to be
much attention paid to the growth of the religiously unaffiliated
population in Europe and North America, more than half (62%) of the
world’s 1.1 billion unaffiliated people live in one Asian country:
China. China also is home to 50% of the world’s 488 million Buddhists
and 73% of the 405 million global adherents of folk religions. Since
China is the world’s most populous nation, it may not be altogether
unexpected that it has a lot of people in a variety of categories. While
China accounts for 19% of the world’s overall population, it is home to
majorities of all Buddhists, unaffiliated people and adherents of folk
religions.
More maps are at the link.
Reposted from Joe Jervis
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