{"id":260391,"date":"2025-06-09T13:47:10","date_gmt":"2025-06-09T17:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/?p=260391"},"modified":"2025-08-14T10:29:37","modified_gmt":"2025-08-14T14:29:37","slug":"religiously-unaffiliated-population-change","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alpha.pewresearch.org\/pewresearch-org\/religion\/2025\/06\/09\/religiously-unaffiliated-population-change\/","title":{"rendered":"4. Religiously unaffiliated population change"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The religiously unaffiliated population \u2013 often called religious \u201cnones\u201d \u2013 is the world\u2019s third-largest religious category, after Christians and Muslims. This group includes people who in surveys and censuses answer a religious identity question by saying they do not have any religion or that they are atheist or agnostic.[23. numoffset=”23″ There are religiously affiliated people, including some self-identified Jews and Christians, who may be considered atheist or agnostic in the broader sense, based on their beliefs about God. This report does not assign religious identity based on people\u2019s beliefs, and we only take into account a respondent\u2019s self-identification, i.e., the response they give when asked a question like \u201cWhat is your religion?\u201d Read the Methodology<\/a> for details about how we measure religious affiliation.]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between 2010 and 2020, religiously unaffiliated people grew more than any group except Muslims. The unaffiliated made up a majority of the population in 10 countries and territories in 2020, up from seven a decade earlier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many religiously unaffiliated people were raised with a religion but no longer identify with it<\/a> in adulthood. This pattern is common in European and North American countries, as well as in Australia and New Zealand, where many people who were raised Christian no longer claim any religious affiliation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What do the religiously unaffiliated believe?<\/summary>\n

The religiously unaffiliated aren\u2019t necessarily devoid of religious beliefs and practices. Research shows that many people who don\u2019t belong to a religious group may still hold religious or spiritual beliefs and participate in religious or spiritual activities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, 54% of religiously unaffiliated U.S. adults<\/a> believe in God or a universal spirit, and 69% believe that humans have a soul or spirit<\/a> in addition to their physical body, according to our 2023-24 U.S. Religious Landscape Study.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In China, where only 10% of people have any religious identity, 21% of religiously unaffiliated<\/a> adults burn incense to worship deities at least a few times a year, and the same share say they visited a site to pray for good luck at least once in the prior year, according to a previous Pew Research Center analysis<\/a> of Chinese academic surveys fielded in 2016 and 2018.

Still, in the United States, China and other countries, religiously unaffiliated adults typically engage in religious and spiritual practices<\/a> at lower rates than religiously affiliated people do.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n

Global change<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Around the world, the number<\/em> of people who say they have no religious affiliation grew by 17%, from 1.6 billion in 2010 to 1.9 billion in 2020. This outpaced the 11% increase among the religiously affiliated. Therefore, the religiously unaffiliated expanded as a share<\/em> of the world\u2019s total population, increasing from 23% in 2010 to 24% a decade later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Table<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Regional change<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Between 2010 and 2020, the number (or count<\/em>) of religiously unaffiliated people grew in every region, and they grew faster than the religiously affiliated in every region except for the Asia-Pacific region and sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Table<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In North America, the unaffiliated population nearly doubled in size to 114 million (up 92%) between 2010 and 2020, while their numbers rose to 77 million in Latin America and the Caribbean (up 67%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the same period, the number of people who claim no religious affiliation grew to 1.5 billion in the Asia-Pacific region and to 29 million in sub-Saharan Africa, up about 10% in both regions, slightly lagging behind the religiously affiliated population in these areas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The percentage<\/em> of people with no religious affiliation grew the most in North America, where religiously unaffiliated people make up 30% of the population (up 13 points), as of 2020. At the same time, the unaffiliated rose to a quarter of all Europeans (up 7 points) and 12% of residents of Latin America and the Caribbean (up 4 points). The share of the population that is religiously unaffiliated fell slightly in the Asia-Pacific region (down 0.2 points) and sub-Saharan Africa (down 0.5 points). It did not change in the Middle East-North Africa region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Regional distribution of the religiously unaffiliated<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As of 2020, the majority of people with no religious affiliation live in the Asia-Pacific region, mostly in China. (The Chinese government promotes atheism. Read about non-religion in China in our report \u201cMeasuring Religion in China<\/a>.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Table<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

About 78% of all religiously unaffiliated people worldwide reside in the Asia-Pacific region, down from 83% in 2010. This 5-point change was the largest among all regions and the only regional decrease larger than 0.1 point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This drop was accompanied by increases in the shares of unaffiliated people living in North America, Europe and Latin America. As discussed earlier, there is widespread switching out of Christianity into the ranks of the unaffiliated<\/a> in these places. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Europe now is home to 10% of the world\u2019s \u201cnones,\u201d followed by North America (6%) and the Latin America-Caribbean region (4%).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Countries with the highest religiously unaffiliated counts<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

With nearly 1.3 billion religiously unaffiliated residents, China is home to about two-thirds of all the religiously unaffiliated people in the world. (China had the world\u2019s largest total population in 2020, though it has since been surpassed by India<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The United States has the second-largest unaffiliated population, yet the 101 million unaffiliated people in the U.S. make up only 5% of the global population of people with no religion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly 90% of all religious \u201cnones\u201d reside in 10 countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Table<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Where did the unaffiliated share of the population change the most?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

The share of the population with no religious affiliation rose substantially (by at least 5 percentage points) in 35 countries. It did not decrease by 5 points or more anywhere in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How is \u2018substantial change\u2019 defined?<\/summary>\n

This section highlights countries that experienced substantial change in the size of their religious populations between 2010 and 2020. We focus on cases where a religious group\u2019s share of a country\u2019s population grew or shrank by at least 5 percentage points. We set that threshold because wide variations in data sources make it difficult to test the statistical significance of differences in population estimates in 2010 and 2020. Refer to the Methodology<\/a> for details.<\/p>\n<\/details>\n\n\n\n

Countries that saw substantial increases in their religiously unaffiliated populations are found in every region except the Middle East and North Africa. Most are European nations that once had large Christian majorities and experienced corresponding decreases among Christians between 2010 and 2020. Disaffiliation from Christianity is a widespread, decades-long pattern seen in many places<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n