London : A study by leading pollster WIN/Gallup International has found that over 60 percent of the world’s population identify themselves as “religious”.
The researchers spoke to more than 63,000 people from 65 countries about religion, The Independent reported on Monday.
However, in the country-by-country data, there were two glaring omissions — Africa and the Middle East. It is safe to assume, though, that were people from these two regions were polled, a vast majority of them would have considered themselves religious, and one could expect a figure in excess of 90 percent, the report said.
A number of things can be interpreted from the available data.
It might sometimes seem that secularism had trumped traditional religion, but that was quite clearly not the case, the study showed.
Based on Gallup’s findings, atheists and other non-religious folk together comprise 33 percent of the world’s population. That is just over half of their religious equivalents.
And bearing in mind the parts of the world that were omitted, this is a very conservative comparison.
Since people in countries like Saudi Arabia (where there is a lack of religious freedom), were not quizzed by Gallup, the most religious country turned out to be Thailand, where 94 percent belonged to some faith and just one percent were atheists.
East Asia was a country of extremes, it seemed, with China being the world’s least religious country, with twice as many atheists as believers. Japan was the second least religious, followed by a crop of European countries.
According to the survey, Britain was among the less religious countries of the world, with 54 percent of the people calling themselves “not religious” as against 30 percent who were religious, and 13 per cent who were convinced atheists.
Western Europe and Oceania were considerably less religious than the other continents.
In what was one of the more unexpected findings of the study, it turned out that older people were less religious than younger people.
People in the middle-aged bracket (44-54 years) were the least likely to be religious and most likely to be atheists.
On the other hand, people in their 20s were most likely to identify with a religion.
Furthermore, housewives were most likely to be religious, followed by retirees and students (66 percent).
One of the more influential factors driving one’s opinion on religion, it seemed, was income.
There was a marked difference in religiosity between middle-income individuals and upper-middle individuals.
It is especially pronounced in the number of people who identified themselves as atheists, from eight percent in the middle income group to 25 percent in the medium-high income range.
A similar trend, though less extreme, was the difference education makes.
Four out of five people without an education identified themselves as religious, whereas that figure fell to three in five for those who attended university.