Religion & Age/Gender

(Sources: Census, April 2001, Office for National Statistics Census, April 2001, General Register Office for Scotland)

• Muslims have the youngest age profile of all the religious groups in Great Britain. About a third of Muslims (34%) were under 16 years of age in 2001, as were a quarter (25%) of Sikhs and a fifth (21%) of Hindus. There are very few older people in these groups - less than one in ten were aged 65 years or over. The Jewish and Christian groups have the oldest age profiles with one in five aged 65 years or over (22% and 19% respectively).
  
  
• Christian and Jewish communities contain predominantly White people who have lived in the UK all their lives or who migrated here before the Second World War, and have an older age structure. Muslim, Hindu and Sikh communities are predominantly of South Asian ethnic origin and have a younger age profile, reflecting later immigration and larger family sizes with more children.
  
  
• Muslims are the only religious group in which men outnumber women - 52% compared with 48%. In all other religious groups there are either the same proportions of men and women or slightly more women than men, reflecting the fact that women live longer than men in the general population. However, men formed the majority of the 'no religion' group, 56%.
  
  
• Younger people are more likely than older people not to belong to any religion, reflecting the trend towards secularisation. Among 16 to 34 year olds in Great Britain, almost a quarter (23%) said that they had no religion compared with less than 5% of people aged 65 or over.