Gen Z and millennials ‘more likely to believe in hell than baby boomers’ in UK study

While younger people have lower levels of religious belief overall and are more likely to identify as atheists, they are almost two times as likely as those born between 1945 and 1965 to think hell is real. Photo / 123rf

Gen Z and millennials are more likely to believe in hell than baby boomers, a major study has found.

While younger people have lower levels of religious belief overall and are more likely to identify as atheists, they are almost two times as likely as those born between 1945 and 1965 to think hell is real.

Researchers at King’s College London’s (KCL) Policy Institute analysed the World Values Survey, one of the largest and most widely used academic social surveys in the world, which has run since 1981.

Using the latest UK data collected last year, they found that 32 per cent of both Gen Z and millennials believe in hell, compared with just 18 per cent of baby boomers and 24 per cent of the pre-war generation.

This is despite millennials and Gen Z being least likely to see themselves as religious – 27 per cent identifying as religious – compared with 46 per cent of the pre-war generation, though this has dropped from 69 per cent since 1981.

For the purposes of the study, the pre-war bracket was defined as those born before 1945, baby boomers as those born from 1945 to 1965, Gen X as those born between 1966 and 1979, millennials as those born from 1980 to 1995 and Gen Z as births since 1996.

Meanwhile, between 1981 and 2022, the share of the overall British public believing in heaven fell from 57 per cent to 41 per cent.

A decline over time among those aged above 58 means there is little difference in belief in heaven among the generations, though young people are still more likely than baby boomers.

Belief in afterlife ‘holding strong’ over decades

Views on life after death have held up over the last four decades, with just under half of the public constantly saying they believe in it.

But again, despite their relative lack of faith, younger people have higher levels of belief, as last year just over half of Gen Z and millennials said they believed in life after death – far more than the 35 per cent share of baby boomers and the 39 per cent of the pre-war generation.

The UK figures are based on a random probability, representative sample of 3,056 adults interviewed by Ipsos through a mix of face-to-face and online surveys.

The data also showed that just under half of Britons said they believed in God in 2022, down from three quarters in 1981.

This means that of the 24 nations in the study, only five are now less likely than the UK to say they believe in God, with China the least likely at 17 per cent.

Bobby Duffy, professor of public policy at KCL, said: “Our cultural attachment to organised religion has continued to decline in the UK – but our belief that there is something beyond this life is holding strong, including among the youngest generations.”

He added: “This is an important period in the development of religiosity and spirituality in western countries like the UK, where the findings show that while the youngest generations continue to have lower attachment to formal religion, many of them have similar or even greater need to believe that there is ‘more than this’.”