Nearly Half of the World’s Migrants Are Christian
With few nones entering the US, religious immigrants are stalling secularization.
The world’s 280 million immigrants have greater shares of Christians, Muslims, and Jews than the general population, according to a new Pew Research Center study released Monday.
“You see migrants coming to places like the US, Canada, different places through Western Europe, and being more religious—and sometimes more Christian in particular—than the native-born people in those countries,” said Stephanie Kramer, the study’s lead researcher.
While Christians make up about 30 percent of the world’s population, the world’s migrants are 47 percent Christian, according to the latest data collected in 2020.
The study found that Muslims make up 29 percent of the migrant population but 25 percent of the world’s population.
Jews, only 0.2 percent of the world’s population but 1 percent of migrants, are by far the most likely religious group to have migrated, with 20 percent of Jews worldwide living outside their country of birth compared to just 6 percent of Christians and 4 percent of Muslims.
Four percent of migrants are Buddhist, matching the general population, and 5 percent are Hindu, compared to 15 percent of the world population.
Over the past 30 years, migration has outpaced global population growth by 83 percent, according to Pew.
Though people immigrate for many reasons, including economic opportunity, to reunite with family, and to flee violence or persecution, religion and migration are often closely connected, the report finds. US migrants are much more likely to have a religious identity than the American-born population in general.
The influx of religious migrants can have a significant impact on the religious composition of their destination ...