Where Do People Find Strength in Faith? A Global Map

What gives you strength when life gets hard? For many people around the world, the answer is tied to religion or spirituality. But just how many people feel this way depends enormously on where they live.

This study asked over 200,000 adults across 22 countries whether they find strength or comfort in their religion or spirituality. The results were striking. In Egypt, 98% of people said yes. In Japan, only 7% did.

Countries that are less industrialized — like Indonesia, Tanzania, Nigeria, and Kenya — tended to have very high rates of religious and spiritual comfort. More industrialized, Western countries like Sweden, Germany, and Australia had much lower rates. The study also looked at who within each country was most likely to report this comfort. Two things stood out the most. First, people who attend religious services regularly were far more likely to find comfort in their faith — 94% of those attending more than once a week said yes, compared to 39% of people who never attend.

Second, older adults tended to report more comfort than younger adults, with a 29 percentage point gap between the oldest and youngest groups. Women were also somewhat more likely than men to find this comfort (72% vs. 64%). But here is something surprising: even among people who never attend religious services, 39% still said they find strength or comfort in religion or spirituality. This suggests that spiritual comfort does not require going to a place of worship. And in every country studied, no men reported more comfort than women — though in some countries, like Indonesia and Egypt, the gender gap was essentially zero. The study also found that education, marital status, and immigration background showed mixed patterns that varied a lot depending on the country. In short, there is no single global story about who finds comfort in faith — but there are some patterns that hold across many places.