More people are believing in the concept of an “afterlife,” even when they are religiously unaffiliated, according to a new study. Ryan Burge, an associate professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University, ran an analysis of nearly five decades of data on the belief of an afterlife amongst individuals. The data was obtained through the General Social Survey which consistently asked participants, “Do you believe there is a life after death?”

According to the data, in 1973, 76% of respondents had stated yes. By 1990, that number had risen to 80%. Belief in the afterlife has slowly increased since that time, with it being currently around 83%. Burge also found that there was statistically very little difference as to whether a person’s educational level impacted their belief in an afterlife. “I also don’t think it’s really possible to say that having more education makes one more (or less) likely to believe in life after death,” concluded Burge.

Burge also looked at age as a factor, noting that despite the notion that people become more religious as they get older, that isn’t actually true. Regarding whether there is an afterlife, although people born in 1960s had a dip, Burge found that belief in an afterlife increased with age as well. Burge also found that people born in the 80s have the same belief in the afterlife as those born thirty or forty years before them.

Burge did find interesting data for belief in the afterlife amongst the religious “nones.” He found that in the 1970s, far less of the “nones” believed in the afterlife than those in the 2000s. By 2000, about 60% of the religious nones believed in an afterlife, a number that has stayed fairly stable through 2022. Burge posited this might be because religious nones of today are less committed to “secularization” than those of the 70s. “It was difficult to be a secular person in the 1970s – they were less than 5% of the population. You couldn’t be a lukewarm atheist during this time period,” stated Burge.

Burge also found that men were less likely than women to belief in the afterlife and liberals were also less likely to believe. Counterintuitively, through a logit regression, Burge found that those with a higher education were more likely to believe in an afterlife. Looking at all the data, Burge stated that despite the rise of religious nones, the belief in an afterlife shows a religiosity in America that functions outside of organized religion. “The fact that more Americans believed in the afterlife in 2022 compared to 1973 flies in the face of conventional wisdom,” wrote Burge. “But I’ve also shown in other posts that belief in miracles is incredibly robust, as well. It’s not easy to describe the changing American religious landscape by just looking at one or two metrics.”