By: Tsering Namgyal Khortsa
With the growing popularity of mindfulness and meditation, as well as a steady stream of converts, it may seem on the surface that Buddhism is expanding around the world. But recent research paints a more complicated—and, at first glance, worrying—picture.
According to the latest analysis by the Pew Research Center, covering 201 countries and territories, Buddhists are the world’s only major religious group whose population declined between 2010 and 2020 despite the powerful charisma of the Dalai Lama, the highest spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism and global recognition as a figure of peace, and Buddhism’s rational self-help approach emphasizing inner peace, compassion, and mental discipline over dogmatic belief or divine authority.
In 2010, an estimated 343 million people identified as Buddhists globally. By 2020, that number had fallen to 324 million—a decline of roughly 5 percent. Over the same period, the global population grew by 12 percent, and all other major religious groups expanded in size. As a result, the Buddhist share of the world’s population dropped from 4.9 percent to 4.1 percent. Two major factors help explain this decline: demographics and religious switching.
Demographics
Demographic trends are not favorable to Buddhism. Nearly all Buddhists—98 percent—live in the Asia-Pacific region, with around 40 percent concentrated in five East Asian societies: China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. These regions tend to have older populations and lower birth rates. The median age of Buddhists globally is about 40, significantly higher than the global median of 31. Fertility rates among Buddhists are also low, averaging 1.6 children per woman—well below the replacement level of 2.1 needed to maintain population size.
As a result, between 2010 and 2020, the number of Buddhists in these five East Asian societies fell by approximately 32 million, or 22 percent.
The Problem of Definition
Yet the survey raises important questions—beginning with the issue of definition. Many people who engage deeply with Buddhist ideas and practices, especially in the West, do not formally identify as Buddhists. Mindfulness meditation, for instance, has been widely adopted in secular contexts, often stripped of religious labeling but rooted in Buddhist traditions. Similarly, Buddhism has long coexisted with other religious identities. It is not uncommon for individuals who identify as Christian or Jewish to privately draw on Buddhist philosophy. Such fluid and overlapping identities are difficult to capture in surveys that rely on fixed, either-or categories.
The China Question
There is also the question of China. Some estimates suggest that China alone may have hundreds of millions of people who engage with Buddhist beliefs or practices. Estimates of how many there actually range from 4 percent to 33 percent of its population, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, from 42 million to 362 million people. The Chinese Communist Party’s nearly 100 million members are required to be atheist, meaning any survey is likely to run into problems out of apprehension.
Measuring religious affiliation in China thus is notoriously difficult due to political sensitivities and restrictions on religious expression. Many individuals may be reluctant to identify themselves as religious in surveys, even if they participate in spiritual practices. If this undercounting is significant, it could substantially alter the global picture of Buddhism’s decline.
Religious Switching
Another key factor is “religious switching”—the movement of individuals away from the religion in which they were raised. According to the Pew Research Center, for every 100 adults raised as Buddhists, 12 convert to Buddhism later in life. Proportionally, this is a higher conversion rate than that of Christianity, Hinduism, or Islam.
However, Buddhism also experiences higher rates of disaffiliation. For every 100 people raised Buddhist, 22 leave the tradition, resulting in a net loss of 10 adherents. This trend is particularly pronounced in East Asia. In Japan, roughly half of those raised Buddhist no longer identify with the religion, while in South Korea the figure rises to six in ten. Thailand stands as an exception, where Buddhist identity remains largely stable.
The reasons for this shift are complex. In South Korea, the growth of Christianity has been driven in part by strong institutional networks and active evangelism. In Japan, the decline may reflect broader social changes, including weakening religious institutions and a disconnect between younger generations and ritual practice.
Transformation, Not a Decline
Taken together, these trends suggest not simply a decline, but a transformation. As a formal religious identity, Buddhism may indeed be shrinking. But as a system of thought—as mindfulness, ethics, and a way of understanding the mind—it appears to be spreading beyond traditional boundaries. In a world marked by the conflict we face today, with the Middle East plunged into unimaginable violence, Buddhist teachings of kindness and compassion encourage empathy, fostering ethical behavior and social harmony. Buddhism’s Middle Way offers a lifestyle that avoids the extremes of self-indulgence and severe austerity which are badly needed today. Its principle of interdependence reminds us that all life is connected.
What the data may be missing is precisely this shift: from belonging to practicing, from identity to experience. Buddhism, in this sense, is no longer something people simply inherit or declare. It is something they adopt, adapt, and live—often without naming it.
Tsering Namgyal is a Tibetan journalist and is author of three books including the novel “The Tibetan Suitcase,” a biography “His Holiness the 17th Karmapa Ogyen Trinley Dorje: A Biography” (reviewed here in Asia Sentinel), and other works.
Your article seems to be restricted to Mahayana Buddhism, as practiced in India and parts of China. It ignores the Theravada branch that is prevalent in Sri-Lanka, Thailand, Laos and Cambodia.