The world’s Muslim population grew much faster than Christians over the past five years, and their births will outnumber those of Christian moms for the first time in 2030, signaling a tremendous global religious shift, according to a new survey.
Pew Research Center on Wednesday said that the Muslim population growth outpaced that of Christians in large part due to far fewer deaths.
“Muslims had the second-largest number of births between 2010 and 2015, with 213 million babies born to Muslim mothers. But Muslims saw the largest natural increase of any religious group – more than 152 million people – due to the relatively small number of Muslim deaths (61 million). This large natural increase results from both high Muslim fertility and the concentration of the Muslim population in younger age groups, which have lower mortality rates,” said the global survey.
When it comes to births, Muslims have almost caught up to Christians. Pew said that 31 percent of the world’s births between 2010 and 2015 were Muslim and 33 percent to Christians.
But it won’t last.
“Globally, the relatively young population and high fertility rates of Muslims lead to a projection that between 2030 and 2035, there will be slightly more babies born to Muslims (225 million) than to Christians (224 million), even though the total Christian population will still be larger. By the 2055 to 2060 period, the birth gap between the two groups is expected to approach 6 million (232 million births among Muslims vs. 226 million births among Christians),” said Pew.
Paul Bedard, the Washington Examiner’s “Washington Secrets” columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]
