Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/96978 
Year of Publication: 
2008
Series/Report no.: 
Vienna Institute of Demography Working Papers No. 4/2008
Publisher: 
Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), Vienna Institute of Demography (VID), Vienna
Abstract: 
We project the religious composition of the United States to 2043, considering fertility differences, migration, intergenerational religious transmission and conversion by 11 ethnoreligious groups. If fertility and migration trends continue, Hispanic Catholics will experience rapid growth, expanding from 10 to 18 percent of the population between 2003 and 2043. Protestants could decrease from 47 to 39 percent over the same period, establishing Catholicism as the largest religion among younger age groups. Immigration drives growth among Hindus and Muslims, while low fertility explains decline among Jews. The religiosity of immigrants combined with the low fertility of nonreligious Americans results in a gradual decline, and subsequent reversal of, secularization, with the nonreligious population share expected to plateau before 2043.
Subjects: 
United States
religion
projections
ethnicity
Catholics
Protestants
migration
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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