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.

Where Belief in Life After Death is Most Prevalent

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:

Country
Share of Adults
Estimated Number of Adults
🇮🇩 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.