CNN/ How many kids still believe in Santa?

In interviews, 85% of 4-year-olds said that they believed in Santa, 65% of 6-year-olds said that they believed, and 25% of 8-year-olds said that they believed. Those numbers were published in a small study in the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry in 1978.

But researchers say those percentages of young children who believe in jolly old Saint Nick seem to have remained steady over the years.

Research in the Journal of Cognition and Development in 2011 shows that 83% of 5-year-olds think that Santa Claus is real, the study's lead author, Jacqueline Woolley, wrote in The Conversation last year.

"We have found in more recent studies that that number of 85% sounds about right," said Thalia Goldstein, assistant professor of applied developmental psychology at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.

"Children's belief in Santa starts when they're between 3 and 4 years old. It's very strong when they're between about 4 and 8," she said. "Then, at 8 years old is when we start to see the drop-off in belief, when children start to understand the reality of Santa Claus."

Nearly three-quarters of Americans say they typically received Christmas Eve visits from Santa as children, and one in five adults says they are the parent or guardian of a child in their home who believes in Santa, according to a Pew Research Center study published in 2013.Outside the United States, how many children believe in Papa Noel? The percentage appears to be similar in some European countries.Of 161 parents in the United Kingdom, 92.5% thought Father Christmas was real for their children up to the age of 8, according to a research paper presented at the annual meeting of the European Early Childhood Education Research Association in Finland in 1999.

Source: CNN