Hindu population in US up by over 1 million

Washington, May 13

The population of Hindus in the US has registered a significant increase of over a million in the last seven years, new research study has shown.

The number of American Hindus rose from 0.4 per cent in 2007 to 0.7 per cent of the total US population in 2014, a rise of over a million in real terms, according to a latest Pew research study.

Muslims constitute 0.9 per cent of the total US population, while the population of Buddhists remained at 0.7 per cent during this period, the study said.

Hindus, along with Jews, are the highest educated community with maximum annual family income among all religious groups, said the study released yesterday.

"Fully 77 per cent of Hindus are college graduates, as are 59 per cent of Jews (compared with 27 per cent of all US adults)," it said.

"These groups also have above-average household incomes. Fully 44 per cent of Jews and 36 per cent of Hindus say their annual family income exceeds $100,000, compared with 19 per cent of the public overall," the study said.

According to the report, Hindus, Muslims and Jews are the three religious traditions that retain the largest shares of adherents raised within their group.

Among all US adults who say they were raised as Hindus, fully 80 per cent continue to identify with Hinduism as adults while most of those who no longer identify as Hindus now describe themselves as unaffiliated, it said.

According to the study, 90 per cent of Hindus say they were raised as Hindus. Further, Hindus are more likely than any other religious group to have a spouse or partner with the same religion (91 per cent), it said. 

Roughly eight-in-ten Mormons (82 per cent) and Muslims (79 per cent) who are married or living with a partner have a mate who shares their religion, as do three-quarters of Catholics and evangelical Protestants.

Muslims and Hindus also stand out for their comparative youthfulness — the median age of adults in each group is 33.

By contrast, the median age of Christian adults is 49, up from 46 in 2007. One-in-five Christians (21 per cent) have reached the traditional retirement age of 65, compared with just nine per cent of the religiously unaffiliated, five per cent of Muslims and four per cent of Hindus, it said.

Pew said 96 per cent of Hindus in the US are either immigrants (87 per cent) or the children of immigrants (nine per cent), as are nearly eight-in-ten Muslims (61 per cent immigrants and 17 per cent the children of immigrants).

The vast majority of Hindus in the US – 78 per cent – were born in the Asia-Pacific region (India is home to by far the world's largest Hindu population).

Muslim immigrants come from many places around the world, including 27 per cent who were born in the Asia-Pacific region, 12 per cent who were born in the Middle East and North Africa and another 12 per cent who were born in sub-Saharan Africa, the study said. — PTI