Which Countries Believe In Life After Death?
Today, 70% of Americans believe in life after death, with a similar share having a religious affiliation.
Europeans, by contrast, tend to have a lower belief in the afterlife. In the Netherlands, this drops to 51% of adults and 47% in Spain. Meanwhile, virtually all adults in India have a religion, but just 43% hold afterlife beliefs.
This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Dorothy Neufeld, shows the percentage of adults in 36 countries who say there is “definitely” or “probably” life after death, based on data from the Pew Research Center.
Below, we compare how adults view the afterlife based on surveys conducted in 2023 and 2024, with these countries covering a combined population of four billion:
| 🇮🇩 Indonesia | 85% | 181,692,723 |
| 🇹🇷 Türkiye | 84% | 56,427,708 |
| 🇰🇪 Kenya | 80% | 28,516,218 |
| 🇵🇭 Philippines | 78% | 65,177,017 |
| 🇧🇩 Bangladesh | 77% | 96,237,768 |
| 🇬🇭 Ghana | 74% | 16,351,157 |
| 🇲🇾 Malaysia | 74% | 20,580,095 |
| 🇳🇬 Nigeria | 71% | 97,446,560 |
| 🇺🇸 U.S. | 70% | 196,831,739 |
| 🇲🇽 Mexico | 69% | 68,163,470 |
| 🇵🇪 Peru | 68% | 17,690,670 |
| 🇸🇬 Singapore | 68% | 3,625,340 |
| 🇨🇱 Chile | 67% | 10,995,669 |
| 🇨🇴 Colombia | 67% | 28,250,671 |
| 🇱🇰 Sri Lanka | 67% | 11,448,854 |
| 🇧🇷 Brazil | 66% | 112,403,780 |
| 🇦🇷 Argentina | 65% | 23,285,592 |
| 🇵🇱 Poland | 64% | 19,931,198 |
| 🇮🇱 Israel | 61% | 4,416,700 |
| 🇿🇦 South Africa | 59% | 27,989,435 |
| 🇨🇦 Canada | 56% | 19,627,634 |
| 🇬🇷 Greece | 56% | 5,048,661 |
| 🇮🇹 Italy | 56% | 29,103,886 |
| 🇫🇷 France | 55% | 31,464,364 |
| 🇬🇧 UK | 53% | 30,384,624 |
| 🇰🇷 South Korea | 52% | 24,066,612 |
| 🇳🇱 Netherlands | 51% | 7,798,148 |
| 🇩🇪 Germany | 50% | 35,947,222 |
| 🇹🇭 Thailand | 50% | 30,548,675 |
| 🇦🇺 Australia | 49% | 10,951,974 |
| 🇯🇵 Japan | 47% | 51,604,788 |
| 🇪🇸 Spain | 47% | 19,975,190 |
| 🇭🇺 Hungary | 45% | 3,683,344 |
| 🇮🇳 India | 43% | 470,273,273 |
| 🇸🇪 Sweden | 38% | 3,334,257 |
In Indonesia, the world’s fourth-most populous country, 85% of adults believe in the afterlife—the highest share across countries surveyed.
Almost million people living in the Toraja region in eastern Indonesia, families may keep the dead in the home for years before a lavish and costly funeral. However, this represents a small subset of the approximately 182 million who hold afterlife beliefs in the country.
In Türkiye, where Islam is the most common religion, 84% believe in life after death. Meanwhile, 80% in Kenya hold this belief, where the predominant faith is Christianity.
Falling in the top third of the list is America, with about 197 million adults saying they definitely or probably believe in life after death. This stands as the highest absolute number only after India, at 470 million.
To learn more about this topic, check out this graphic on the countries with the highest number of Christians in the world.
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