Muslim Babies Will Outnumber Christian Newborns By 2035, Study Projects

In 20 years, Muslim babies will outnumber the number of Christian births. Pew Research Center conducted a study projecting the Islam population will become the fastest growing religious group by 2035.

The study on religious projections cited Christians make up 31 percent of the world's nearly seven billion population. Since 2010, however, experts saw a rising trend among Muslim births. It is currently the world's second largest population at 23 percent. If this trend continues until 2050, the number of Muslims could increase to as much as 73 percent, as per Pew Forum's projection.

Some factors to the Muslim baby boom pointed to the higher birth rates and lower infant mortality rates in countries like Somalia and the Arab states, as well as the Sub-Saharan Africa regions. Low fertility rates and an aging population in Europe, North America and some Asian regions like Japa and China, meanwhile, contributed to the projected decline of other religious groups, as per CNN.

Some 27 percent of Muslims are expected to live in the Sub-Saharan Africa regions in the next two decades while the Muslim population will drop to as much as 50 percent in the Asian regions. The Muslim population in the Middle East and North Africa will stay constant at 20 percent by 2035.

Experts underscored Christianity will remain popular as it is today but its population birth rate will grow slow and steady as it was since 2010. Experts projected the two largest religious groups' birth gap will be at 6 million after 2050, with Muslims pegged at 232 million births and Christians at 226 million births.

Meanwhile, baby births in families who do not align with any religion, also known as agnostics or atheists, saw a drop since 2010 from 16 percent to the current 10 percent. Experts said this decline will continue by 2035. Pew Research based their study among 2,500 censuses, population registers and surveys globally.