Author: Aziz Haniffa in Washington, DC
Publication: Rediff.com
Date: February 26, 2008
URL: http://www.rediff.com/news/2008/feb/26survey.htm
Not only are the Hindus and Mormons the most
likely to be married (78 percent and 71 percent respectively), but also the
most likely to be married to someone within their own faith (90 percent and
83 percent respectively), a landmark survey that details the religious affiliation
of the American public and explores the remarkable dynamism taking place in
the US religious marketplace has found.
The study, titled the US Religious Landscape
Survey, released on Monday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life,
also found that Hindus also have the lowest divorce rate of any group --only
5 percent have been divorced.
It also noted that nearly half of Hindus in
the US, one-third of Jews and a quarter of Buddhists have obtained postgraduate
education, compared with only about one-in-10 of the adult population overall.
The survey that was based on interviews conducted
in English and Spanish with a nationally representative sample of over 35,000
adults, and includes detailed information on religious affiliation and provides
estimates of the size of religious groups that are as small as three-tenth
of 1 percent of the population, also found that Hindus and Jews are much more
likely than other groups to report high income levels.
More than four in 10 of Hindus and Jews (43
percent and 46 percent respectively) made more than $100,000 per year.
In sharp contrast to Hinduism and Islam, Buddhism
in the US is primarily made up of native-born adherents, whites and converts,
and only one-in-three American Buddhists describe their race as Asian, and
three-in-four Buddhists say they are converts to Buddhism,it said.
The survey also found that Mormons and Muslims
are the groups with the largest families with more than one-in-five Mormon
and 15 percent of Muslim adults in the US having three or more children living
at home.
Hindus were less likely than other traditions
to have no children living at home (52 percent), but compared with Muslims
and Mormons, "they are more likely to have smaller families, with only
a small number (3 percent) having three or more children at home', the study
said.
Luis Lugo, director of the Pew Forum, said,
"People will be surprised by the amount of movement by Americans from
one religious group to another-- or to no religion at all. They'll also be
surprised by the extent to which immigration is helping to reshape the US
religious landscape."
Greg Smith, Research Fellow at the Pew Forum,
who along with John Green, Senior Fellow at the Forum, and Lugo who participated
in a teleconference with reporters, said the features and methodological strengths
of the project revealed "some fascinating details about the demographics
of a variety of religious groups".
"We find that for instance, Hindus, stand
out compared with other religious groups for their extraordinary high levels
of educational attainment," he said, and pointed out that "nearly
half of Hindus in the United States--48 percent--have obtained postgraduate
education over and above earning a college degree."
Smith said, "That means that more than
four times as many Hindus have reached this educational level as compared
with the public overall."
With regard to nativity by religious tradition,
when the survey breaks down the various religious traditions by nationality,
it found that Hindus, Muslims and members of Orthodox churches were the groups
most heavily comprised of immigrants--86 percent, 65 percent and 38 percent
of these groups, respectively, were born in another country.
Lugo predicted that "every indication
is that adherence of these other world religions, such as Islam, Buddhism
and Hinduism, will continue to grow as a percentage of the US population."
He said that when the Census Bureau took its
own numbers back in the mid-1950s, "all these groups were virtually a
rounding error. So clearly they are growing and we know that you don't need
a high percentage of folks who are new of different as perceived by most folks
in society to generate a lot of conversation, not least in politics and how
do we accommodate the increasing diversity".
Lugo said that "even 5 percent folks
from these other world religions, which to most Americans are very new and
very strange, generates a significant challenge for the country to begin to
expand the process of accommodating beyond the categories that are most comfortable
with--Protestant, Catholic and Jew".
