The Global Religious Landscape June 2012 | Page 15

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PEW FORUM ON RELIGION & PUBLIC LIFE

About the Study
These are among the key ndings of a new study of the global religious landscape conducted
by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life as part of the Pew-Templeton Global Religious
Futures project, which analyzes religious change and its impact on societies around the world.
The demographic study explores the size, geographic distribution and median age of eight
major religious groups – including the unaf liated – that together represent
of the
estimated
global population. The study is based on a country-by-country analysis of data
from more than ,
national censuses, large-scale surveys and of cial population registers
that were collected, evaluated and standardized by the Pew Forum’s demographers and other
research staff. Many countries have recently conducted a national census or are in the midst
of doing so. Therefore, new data are likely to emerge over the next few years. owever, a datacollection cut-off had to be made at some point; this report is based on information available
as of early
.
For estimates of the religious composition of individual countries, see table on page . For
details on the methodology used to produce estimates of religious populations in
countries
and territories, see Appendix A. For a list of data sources by country, see Appendix .
To see each country’s and territory’s population broken down by number and percentage
into the eight major religious groups in the study, see the sortable tables at http://features.
pewforum.org/grl/population-number.php.
There are some minor differences between the estimates presented in this study and
previous Pew Forum estimates of Christian and Muslim populations around the world. These
differences re ect the availability of new data sources, such as recently released censuses in a
few countries, and the use of population growth projections to update estimates in countries
with older primary sources. (For more details, see page
in the Methodology.)

4 A population register is a list of all permanent residents of a country. See the United Nations Statistics Division’s description of population registers (http://
unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/sources/popreg/popregmethods.htm).
5 For instance, in December 2012, just before the release of this report, new religion data were released from the 2011 Census of England and Wales. The
new data suggest a slightly different religious landscape than the estimate made by this study for the broader United Kingdom (England, Wales, Scotland
and Northern Ireland), which is based primarily on the 2010 Annual Population Survey carried out by the U.K.’s Office for National Statistics.

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