Jews are more highly educated that any other major religious group with an average of 13.4 years of formal schooling while Christians come in second with 9.3 years, according to the results of a new global study on religion and education by the US-based Pew Research Center.
The study also shows that Muslims and Hindus typically have the lowest level of education – with an average of 5.6 years each, below the global average of 7.7 years. Those who described their religion as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” had an average of 8.8 years of formal schooling.
The report, Religion and education around the world, said the results were “partly a function of where religious groups are concentrated throughout the world”. “For instance, the vast majority of the world’s Jews live in the United States and Israel – two economically developed countries with high levels of education overall. And low levels of attainment among Hindus reflect the fact that 98 per cent of Hindu adults live in the developing countries of India, Nepal and Bangladesh.”
But it also noted there were some differences among groups that lived in the same region – pointing to the higher levels of education found among Christians in sub-Saharan Africa compared with Muslims, a fact which could be attributable to historical factors such as missionary activity during colonial times.
Other findings in the report show that there are some disparities between the level of education of men and women within religious groupings. While Christian women, on average, had 0.4 years less schooling than Christian men, among Muslims the gap widened to 1.5 years and among Hindus to 2.7 years. Yet the report did note that these disparities “appear to be decreasing over time”, stating that among Hindus, for example, the youngest respondents in the study spent nearly double the amount of time in formal schooling as the oldest.
The report, which was based on information drawn from census and survey date from 151 countries and involved people aged 25 and older, also showed that about one in five people across the globe had no formal schooling at all.
