NEW YORK — The share of Americans who identify as white and Christian has dropped below 50 percent, fueled by immigration and growing numbers of people who reject organized religion, according to a survey.

Christians remain a large majority at nearly 70 percent of Americans, but white Christians now comprise only 43 percent of the population, according to the Public Religion Research Institute based in Washington, D.C. Four decades ago, about eight in 10 Americans were white Christians.

The change includes drops in predominantly white mainline Protestant denominations such as Presbyterians and Lutherans; an increasing Latino presence in the Roman Catholic Church as some non-Hispanic white Catholics leave; and shrinking ranks of white evangelicals.

The survey of more than 100,000 people was conducted from January 2016 to January of this year and has a margin of error of plus or minus 0.4 percentage points.