WASHINGTON, December 17, 2016 (by Carol Zimmerman, CNS): A new study showing the disparity of education levels among religious groups ranks Jews as the faith group with the most formal education and Muslims and Hindus with the least years of formal schooling. Christians are the second-highest educated religious group in the world, followed by the religiously unaffiliated and Buddhists, according to the global demographic study by the Pew Research Center, released Dec. 13.
The report also showed differences in educational levels among religious groups in the same region. In sub-Saharan Africa, Christians tend to have higher average levels of education than Muslims — in part because of historical factors that include the work of missionaries. The study’s findings do not match the U.S. picture where Muslims and Hindus are often better educated than the Christian majority. Ninety-six percent of Hindus and 54 percent of Muslims in the U.S. have college degrees, compared to 36 percent of Christians. The gaps in education in religious groups around the world are partly the result of where these groups live. For example, the majority of the world’s Jews live in the United States and Israel — economically developed countries with high levels of education — while 98 percent of Hindu adults live in developing countries of India, Nepal and Bangladesh.
On the good news front, the report showed that many of the disparities in educational levels seem to be decreasing. Muslims and Hindus, the religions with the lowest levels of education, have made the biggest educational gains in recent generations. One takeaway from the study is that even with recent gains by young adults, education around the world lags for many people. The global norm is barely more than a primary education — an average of about eight years of formal schooling for men and seven years for women. At the high end of the spectrum, 14 percent of adults ages 25 and older have a university degree or other kind of higher education, such as advanced vocational training. An even larger percentage — 19 percent of adults worldwide, or more than 680 million people — have no formal schooling at all.