Joshua Project - Great Commission Statistics about Peoples, Countries and Languages

Global Statistics
Peoples-by-Country		Individuals
Global Total	16,309	6.69 billion
Unreached / Least-Reached	6,631	2.74 billion
% Unreached / Least-Reached	40.7 %	41.0 %
10/40 Window Total	7,020	4.07 billion
10/40 Window Least-Reached	5,194	2.38 billion
10/40 Window % Least-Reached	74.0 %	58.6 %
		Count
Affinity Blocs		16
People Clusters		251
Peoples Groups (without reference to Countries)		9,773
Unreached Peoples Groups (without reference to Countries)		4,055
Countries		236
Languages		6,511

Challenging Mission Facts
• Of the 16,309 people groups by country, 6,631 are still considered unreached. • 9,678 people groups by country are not considered Least-Reached, totaling 3,948,131,000 individuals, or about 59% of the world's population. • Of the 16,309 total people groups, 6,631 are identified as Least-Reached using Joshua Project criteria, totaling 2,738,997,000 individuals. Of these 6,631 groups, 5,194 are in 10/40 Window countries. That means 78% of all unreached people groups are in the 10/40 Window. • 1,437 of the Least-Reached groups are NOT in the 10/40 Window, totaling 354,372,000 individuals. These groups are relatively accessible to the Good News of the Gospel. • Of the 6,631 Least-Reached people groups, about 3,449 (52%) are small groups under 10,000 in population (or population unknown) and all these groups total less than 8,000,000 individuals. Of the remaining 3,182 least-reached groups, about 1,293 are under 50,000 in population. That leaves 1,889 Least-Reached groups 50,000 and over in population. A vibrant church in a large group may take the gospel to a number of smaller satellite people groups that have ethnic similarities.

People Group Facts

• The traditional way missiologists identify people groups is by counting each group once per country of residence. There are 16,309 People-in-Country Groups, of which 6,631 are considered unreached. Joshua Project data also allows a view of people groups without reference to country boundaries where ethnicities are counted only once. There are 9,773 ethnic people groups (without reference to countries) identified in the Joshua Project database with 4,055 considered unreached.

• There are 7,998 people groups with fewer than 10,000 individuals; in addition there are 651 for which no population has been reported (but the population is probably small). For all these small groups, the total number of individuals is less than 22,000,000, meaning that 53% of the 16,309 people groups contain only a tiny fraction of the world's population.

• The largest least-reached group is the Japanese, with over 120,000,000 individuals.

• The Mandarin Chinese is the largest people group, being in 82 countries with a total of about 800,000,000 individuals, and with 783,000,000 of those in China.

• Jews are found in 126 countries, Arabs in 130 countries, and Chinese groups in 127 countries.

• India has the largest number of ethnic people groups with about 2,500 in the Joshua Project database. (The number of people groups in India varies greatly depending on the researcher and how the term "people group" is defined. On a pure linguistic basis there are about 330 to 350 "people groups" in India. Other lists may treat certain sub-groups as full people groups, raising the totals for India. For further information, see the ethno-linguistic vs. ethnic discussion on the definitions page.

• Papua New Guinea is the runner-up in number of people groups, at 878. Interestingly, the largest group of these 878 has only 816,000 in population. The total population of the country is only 6,460,000, yet there are nearly 900 people groups. Indonesia (768) and Nigeria (521) follow Papua New Guinea.

• On the other end of the spectrum, South Korea only has seven people groups, with a country population of 48,400,000.

• There are 988 languages/dialects spoken in Papua New Guinea. There are only 37 languages/dialects spoken in Japan, which has a population over 25 times as large as Papua New Guinea. The diversity of Papua New Guinea and the homogeneity of Japan!

• In India, one people group (the Gond) speaks 96 languages. 1,656 groups (out of the total of 2,500) speak more than one language.

• Of the 16,309 people groups in the Joshua Project database, 19% speak more than one language ignoring dialects, and 27% if dialects are included.

• One people group in India (Nai), has 70 alternate names. 9,000 of the over 16,000 total peoples-by-country have more than one alternate people name.

Language Facts

• There are approximately 6,900 total languages in the world, about 400 of which are considered "nearly-extinct" per the Ethnologue. Approximately 2,500 languages have some or all of the Bible.

• Of the world's approximately 6,900 languages, 4,546 have at least one of the following: Bible portions, the Jesus Film, Christian radio, or Gospel recordings. Total speakers of these languages is 6,200,000,000, or over 95% of the world's population.

• About 4,400 languages are without Scripture portions available, with some 634,000,000 speakers. Translation projects are in progress in an estimated 1,600 languages that currently are without adequate Scriptures. There are about 2,500 languages needing Bible translation work to begin.

• There are 1,019 languages with the Jesus film available, 323 with Gospel radio available, and 4,290 with Gospel recordings available (plus approximately 2000 language recordings that have not had Ethnologue codes assigned yet). 2,354 languages have none of these resources available, with about 195,000,000 speakers.

• 90% of the world's people, if they have an internet cafe and the funds, can hear the gospel in a language they understand.

• There is a 90% chance that a foreign Christian meeting a non-believer overseas could find a gospel recording on-line and give it as a gift to any non-believer they meet and it would be understood.

• Only 3% of the world's people speak a language that does not yet have a Gospel recording.

• About 40% of the world's language groups (divided by country) still do not have any Gospel recording in their language (approximately 4100 total language groups when divided by country.)

Religon Facts

• 3,318 groups are primarily Muslim, totaling nearly 1,476,000,000 individuals.

• 2,535 groups are primarily Hindu, totaling about 987,000,000 individuals.

• 569 groups are primarily Buddhist, totaling nearly 619,000,000 individuals.

• Of the world's 16,309 ethnic people groups by country, 6,689 (41%) are primarily Christian, totaling over 2,271,000,000, or nearly one third the world's population.

• Of 236 total countries, 169 (72%) are Christian-majority countries. Total population for these countries is 2,517,000,000.


		SEARCH: