Demographics of Switzerland

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Switzerland sits at the crossroads of several major European cultures, which have heavily influenced the country's languages and cultural practices. Switzerland has four official languages: German, French, Italian, and Romansh. The German spoken in the German speaking part of Switzerland is predominantly a range of Swiss dialects, but newspapers and some broadcasts use High German as used in Germany. Many Swiss speak more than one language. English is widely known, especially among professionals.

More than 75% of the population live in the central plain, which stretches between the Alps and the Jura Mountains and from Geneva in the southwest to the Rhine River and Lake Constance in the northeast. Resident foreigners and temporary foreign workers make up about 20% of the population.

Almost all Swiss are literate. Switzerland's 13 institutes of higher learning enrolled 99,600 students in the academic year of 2001-02. About 25% of the adult population hold a diploma of higher learning.

The constitution guarantees freedom of worship and the different religious communities co-exist peacefully.

Switzerland consistently ranks high on quality of life indices, including per capita income, concentration of computer and internet usage per capita, insurance coverage per individual, and health care rates. For these and many other reasons, such as the four languages, it serves as an excellent test market for businesses hoping to introduce new products into Europe.

[edit] Population

Total of registered residents (numbers relate to 31 December):

• 7,489,370 (2005)
• 7,415,102 (2004)
• 7,255,653 (2001)
• ca. 3,300,000 (1900)
• ca. 1,700,000 (1815)

[edit] Age structure

0-20 years: 1,6 million (22%)

20-64 years: 4,6 million (62%)

65 and over: 1,2 million (16%)

Data (2005 est.)

As population growth curbs, the percentage of elderly people increases. In July 2006, the Swiss Federal Office of Statistics published a projection estimating that by 2050, one in three adult Swiss will be of retirement age (as opposed to one in five in 2005). Total population was projected to stagnate in 2036 at around 8.1 million and fall slightly to 8 million in 2050. The predicted age structure for 2050 is:

0-20 years: 1,4 million (18%)

20-64 years: 4,4 million (55%)

65 and over: 2,2 million (27%)

[edit] Population growth rate

0.3% (2000 est.)

[edit] Birth rate

10.4 births/1,000 population (2000 est.)

[edit] Death rate

8.75 deaths/1,000 population (2000 est.)

[edit] Net migration rate

1.38 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2000 est.)

[edit] Sex ratio

Data: (2000 est.)

[edit] Infant mortality rate:

4.53 deaths/1,000 live births (2000 est.)

[edit] Life expectancy at birth

Data: (2000 est.)

[edit] Total fertility rate

1.47 children born/woman (2000 est.)

[edit] Nationality

The number of registered resident foreigners was 1,001,887 (16.17%) in 1970. This amount decreased to 904,337 (14.34%) in 1979, and has increased steadily since that time, passing the 20% mark during 2001 and rising to 1,524,663 (20.56%) in 2004.

In 2003, 35,424 persons were granted Swiss citizenship, compared to 8,658 in 1990.

In 2000, 1.3 million resident foreigners (86.9%, or 17.8% of the total population [1]), had European citizenship (Ex-Yugoslavian: 362,000; Italian: 322,000; Portuguese: 142,000; German: 112,000; Spanish: 84,000; Turkish: 83,000; French: 63,000; Austrian: 30,000), 92,000 residents were from Asia, 51,000 from the Americas, 50,000 from Africa and 3,000 from Oceania.

In 2004, 623,100 Swiss citizens (8.9%) lived abroad, the largest group in France (166,200), followed by the USA (71,400) and Germany (70,500).

[edit] Religions

In 2000, 5.78 million residents (79.2%, compared to 93.8% in 1980) were Christian (Roman Catholic 41.8%, Protestant 35.3%, Orthodox 1.8%). 809,800 (11.1%, compared to 3.8% in 1980) were without any religious affiliation. 310,800 (4.3%) were Muslim (compared to 0.9% in 1980), 17,900 (0.2%) were Jewish.

[edit] Languages

The four official languages of Switzerland are German, French, Italian, and Rumantsch. Native speakers number about 64% (4.6 million) for German (mostly Swiss German dialects), 20% (1.5 million, mostly Swiss French, but including some Franco-Provençal dialects) for French, 7% (0.5 million; including Lombardic dialects) for Italian and less than 1% (35,000) for Rumantsch.

The Cantons of Fribourg, Berne, Valais and Grisons are officially bi- or trilingual (Grisons). In fact, Jura and Ticino are also bilingual, but the traditional German minority is very small.

The non-official language with the largest group of native speakers is Serbo-Croatian with 111,000 speakers in 2000, followed by Albanian with 95,000, Portuguese with 89,500, Spanish with 77,500, English with 73,000, Turkish 44,000, and a total of 165,000 speakers of other languages, amounting to roughly 10% of the population with a native language not among the four official languages.

[edit] Literacy

Definition: age 15 and over can read and write

Total population: 99% (1980 est.) (no separate numbers for sexes)

[edit] Delinquence

The police registered a total of 332,452 criminal offenses in 2003, including 187 killings and 547 cases of rape. In the same year, 86,186 adults (85% of them male, 51.1% of them Swiss citizens) were convicted under criminal law. 54.8% of convictions were for traffic offences, 37.9% of punishments were in the form of fines only. In the same year, 13,483 minors (82% of them male, 61.4% of them of Swiss nationality, 79.5% aged between 15 and 18) were convicted.

[edit] See also

• List of Swiss people
• Switzerland
• Politics of Switzerland

[edit] External links

• Swiss Federal Office of Statisticsbg:Население на Швейцария

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