Educational Achievement Varies by Religion, according to Pew survey

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The proportion of people with a four-year college degree in the U.S. varies by religion, according to a recent Pew report.

According to the report, taken from the Pew's 2014 Religious Landscape Study of more than 35,000 U.S. adults, Hindus (77 percent) and Unitarian Universalists (67 percent) have the highest percentage of those with college degrees, compared to the 27 percent of the surveyed sample of U.S. adults who have a college degree.

Roughly six-in-ten Jews (59 percent), Anglicans (59 percent), and Episcopalians (56 percent) have college degrees.

About half of Hindus (48 percent) and one-third of Jews (31 percent) have a post-graduate degree. These two groups also have high household incomes, a case in point for the link between a college degree and economic achievement, with 44 percent of Jews and 36 percent of Hindus living in households with annual incomes of at least $100,000.

Nearly half of Buddhists and members of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) (47 percent), along with nearly four-in-ten Orthodox Christians (40 percent) and Muslims (39 percent), and one-third of Mormons (33 percent) have larger shares of those who finished college.

A quarter of Catholics (26 percent) and Protestants (24 percent) have a college degree, although mainline Protestants (33 percent) have a higher percentage of those who finished college compared to their evangelical (21 percent) and historically black Protestant counterparts (15 percent).

Atheists and agnostics ted to be highly educated as well. Slightly over four-in-ten atheists (43 percent) and agnostics (42 percent) have completed college.