Pew Report: Jews and Hindus are most highly-educated in US

The report shows a 6.7 percent increase in the amount of Americans who do not affiliate with any religion.

By MICHELLE MALKA GROSSMAN
Young Jews rally in support of Israel in New York, July 20. (photo credit: EDUARDO MUNOZ / REUTERS)
Young Jews rally in support of Israel in New York, July 20.
(photo credit: EDUARDO MUNOZ / REUTERS)
The Pew Research Center on Tuesday released its annual report on religion in the United States which showed that Hindus and Jews were the most highly-educated people in the country, as well as those with the highest incomes on average.
According to the 2014 US Religious Landscape Study, 59 percent of Jews in the US said they were college graduates, while 77% of Hindus also said they were holders of academic degrees. This contrasted with Americans adults as a whole, of whom 27% said they are college graduates.
The study also revealed that both Jews and Hindus in the US had the highest average household incomes. Of those surveyed, 36% of Hindus and 44% of Jews said their family's annual income was above $100,000. For the public as a whole, 19% were able to say the same.
As far as size, the study showed that the Jewish population in the US increased from 1.7% of the population in 2007 to 1.9% in 2014. However, a percentage of change was not reported, since it was small enough to fall within the margin of error. Overall, non-Christian worshippers in the US increased 1.2%, going from 4.7% to 5.9% of the population in the span of seven years.
The fastest-growing single religion in the US, according to Pew, was Islam, with a 0.5% growth, and making up 0.9% of the US population. The second fastest-growing religion was Hinduism, which showed a 0.3% growth, making up 0.7% of the population as a whole. The category of "other faiths," which included Native American religions, New Age religions and Unitarians, also grew by 0.3% since 2007, comprising 1.5% of the American population.
The amount of those surveyed who identified as Christians decreased by 7.8%, going from 78% of the population in 2007 to 70.6% in 2014.
The number of those unaffiliated with any faith, which included agnostics, atheists and those who identified as "nothing in particular," rose by 6.7% since 2007, amounting to about 55.8 million people.
For the report, 35,071 Americans aged 18 and older were surveyed by telephone, both landline and mobile, between June 4 and September 30, 2014.
All numbers had a margin of error of 0.6 percentage points.