Religious Denominations in Vienna & Austria: Baseline Study for 2016 - Scenarios until 2046

The publication presents the results of the research project "Religious Denominations in Vienna & Austria: Baseline study for 2016 - Scenarios until 2046" conducted by the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The aim of this study project was twofold: Firstly, to estimate the religious composition of the population of Austria and Vienna in 2016 taking into account the most recent migration movements; and secondly, to project the population of Austria and Vienna from 2016 to 2046 based on several scenarios related mostly to the three major forces affecting religious composition, migration (including asylum-seekers), differential fertility, and religious conversion. While the projections demonstrate some of the possible futures that Austria and its capital city could experience in the coming decades, and those are all quite dissimilar, they also show that religious diversity is bound to increase, and there are no reasons to think that any of the trends that have been in place already for several decades in the country will stop and that the country would move back to the situation of the early 1970s.