Pew II: Muslims are World’s Youngest

            Muslims are the world’s youngest population, with a median age of 23—five years younger than the global median of 28. The median age of Christians is 30 years old, while the median age of the world’s Jews is 36. The median age of Hindus is 26 and Buddhists is 34, according to a Pew Research Center survey.
            In 2012, the world’s Muslims reached 1.6 billion people, or 23 percent of the world’s population, according to a Pew Research Center report. About 19.8 percent of the world’s Muslims lived in the Middle East and North Africa, while 61.7 percent resided in the Asia-Pacific region. The following are excerpts from the “The Global Religious Landscape” report by The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, which was released in December 2012.

            Median Age Globally, Muslims are younger (median age of 23) than the overall global population (median age of 28). Among the five regions for which data are available, Muslims are youngest in sub-Saharan Africa (median age of 17), followed by the Middle East and North Africa (23), Asia and the Pacific (24), North America (26) and Europe (32). Muslims are younger than the general population in each of the major regions for which data are available: North America (Muslims 26 years; general population 37 years), Europe (32 vs. 40), Asia and the Pacific (24 v s. 29), sub-Saharan Africa (17 vs. 18) and the Middle East and North Africa (2 3 vs. 24).

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