Washington, April 2 (PTI): Hindus will become the world's third largest population by 2050, while India will overtake Indonesia as the country with the largest Muslim population, according to a new study.

The Pew Research Center's study on the future of world religions, which was released today, predicts that the Hindu population will rise by 34 per cent worldwide, from a little over a billion to nearly 1.4 billion by 2050.

By 2050, Hindus will be third, making up 14.9 per cent of the world's total population, followed by people not affiliated with any religion, accounting for 13.2 per cent, the report said.

People with no religious affiliation currently have the third largest share of the world's total population.

Muslims are projected to grow faster than the world's overall population and Hindus and Christians are projected to roughly keep pace with worldwide population growth, the report said.

"India will retain a Hindu majority but also will have the largest Muslim population of any country in the world, surpassing Indonesia," it said.

"Over the next four decades, Christians will remain the largest religious group, but Islam will grow faster than any other major religion," according to the report.

The report predicted that by 2050, there will be near parity between Muslims (2.8 billion, or 30 per cent of the population) and Christians (2.9 billion, or 31 per cent), possibly for the first time in history.

Buddhism is the only faith not expected to increase its followers, due to an ageing population and stable fertility rates in Buddhist countries, such as China, Japan and Thailand.

The projections considered fertility rates, trends in youth population growth and religious conversion figures.