Report: as many Muslims as Christians by 2050

WASHINGTON, April 2 (UPI) -- The number of Muslims in the world will roughly equal the number of Christians by 2050, a study released Thursday indicates.

The project by the Washington-based Pew Research Center, "The Future of the World's Religions," called Islam the world's fastest growing faith and predicted all religions, except Christianity, will have an increase in their percentages; Christians account for 31.4 percent of the world's population, as of 2010, and that figure is expected to remain the same.

The report said Christians will increase in number from 2.17 billion in 2010 to 2.92 billion in 2050; the number of Muslims will rise from 1.6 billion in 2010 to 2.76 billion in 2050.

"We have spent years analyzing thousands of data sets, censuses and populations registers," lead researcher Conrad Hackett told the Washington Post. "It's been a tremendous amount of work."

The study also showed atheists and others unaffiliated with any religion will decline, as will the number of Christians in the United States; there will be more Muslims in the United States by 2050 than Jews; 40 percent of the world's Christians will reside in sub-Saharan Africa and although India will remain a primarily Hindu country, it will have the world's largest Muslim population.

Although the study is based on census and migration issue, Hackett said, "Fertility is the single most important factor driving outcomes." The Muslim birthrate, globally, is 3.1 children per woman, compared to 2.7 children per Christian woman, 2.4 children per Hindu woman, and 2.3 children per Jewish woman.