The world's Buddhist population is shrinking faster than any other
Culture
East Asia's falling birth rates mean that for every ten Buddhist adherents today, there may be only five by the end of the century.
In the bustling temples of Seoul and Tokyo, the scent of incense is increasingly met with the silence of empty cradles. Buddhism is currently facing a demographic crisis unlike any other faith, primarily because it is concentrated in East Asian nations where fertility has plummeted. In South Korea, the birth rate has dropped to 0.72, far below the 2.1 needed to keep a population stable. Because 98 percent of the world's 500 million Buddhists live in these rapidly aging regions, the median age of the faith has climbed to 45 years.