The young population and high fertility rates of Muslims around the globe have led to a projection that by 2035 at the latest, there will be slightly more babies born to Muslims (225 million) than to Christians (224 million), despite the fact that there will continue to be, for a while, more Christians than Muslims on the planet. By the 2055 to 2060 period, this gap in number of births could reach 6 million (232 million births for Muslims, 226 million for Christians), Pew Research Center reported on Wednesday.
Muslims are likely to be the world’s fastest-growing major religious group in the decades ahead, according to Pew, which suggests the signs of the rapid growth are already visible. Between 2010 and 2015, Muslim births reached an estimated 31% of all babies born around the world, while the overall Muslim population was only 24%.
The world’s Christian population – mainly in sub-Saharan Africa – continues to grow, but not as fast as the Muslims –33% of the world’s babies were born to Christians, who make up 31% of the world’s population.
At the same time, in recent years, Christians have had a disproportionately large share of the world’s deaths – 37%. This is especially true in Europe, where the number of deaths is already exceeding the number of births among Christians.
In Germany, there were an estimated 1.4 million more Christian deaths than births between 2010 and 2015, a pattern that is expected to continue across much of Europe in the decades ahead, according to Pew.