Australians continue to turn away from religion: census
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E-mail Xinhua, June 27, 2017
Australians are continuing to turn their back on religion as data from the 2016 census showed that for the first time, those affiliated with "no religion" had overtaken Catholicism to be the largest proportion of the population.
The data from the 2016 census was released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) on Tuesday, revealing that not only religion was on the back of many Australians' minds, but that families were more diverse than ever before, with fewer households speaking English as a first language.
Highlighting the shift away from religion in Australian society, just under a third of all Australians (30.1 percent) reported that they had no religious affiliation in 2016, up from 22.3 percent reported in the 2011 census.
Those who affiliated with Catholicism fell from 25.3 percent in 2011 to 22.6 percent in 2016, while Anglicans made up 13.3 percent in 2016 down from 17.1 percent in 2011.
Overall, the majority of Australians still identify as being under the Christian denomination (Anglican, Catholic or otherwise) but for the first time, "no religion" is the single most popular choice for Australians.
The figures are in stark contrast from the results of the 1966 census, in which 88 percent of Australians were identified as being Christian and 0.8 percent of respondents said they were of "no religion".
But while many Australians were losing the faith in Christianity, there was huge growth among other less-represented religions. Hinduism has experienced a 533 percent increase in participation between 1991 (0.3 percent of the population) and 2016 (1.9 percent), while Buddhism and Islam grew by 200 percent and 160 percent respectively in the same time.
Buddhists now represent 2.4 percent of Australians (up from 0.8 percent in 1991), while Muslims are now 2.6 percent of the population (from 0.9 percent in 1991).
Meanwhile, English remains the most widely-spoken language with 72.7 percent of Aussies admitting that English is their "first language" spoken at home, but that figure is down from 76.8 percent in 2011.
Mandarin is the second-most widely spoken language at home, up 0.9 percent from 1.6 percent in 2011 to 2.5 percent in 2016, followed by Arabic (up 0.1 percent to 1.4 percent) and Cantonese (equal with Vietnamese at 1.2 percent of the total Australian population).
In addition, there was a 39 percent increase of couples who were identified as being same-sex in Australia (46,800 in 2016), while the median age of same-sex couples were drastically lower than those in more "traditional" pairings (40 years of age compared to 48).
The census also showed that the nation's median weekly income had increased from 577 Australian dollars (438 U.S. dollars) in 2011 to 662 Australian dollars (502 dollars) in 2016. Those who worked in the nation's capital, Canberra, had the nation's highest weekly median income in 2016 at 998 Australian dollars (757 dollars) per week.
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