PRB | Regions
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QuickFacts by Region

Asia
Europe
Latin America
Middle East / North Africa
North America
Sub-Saharan Africa

Asia

April 2003
What percentage of newborn deaths occur in developing countries? Almost 12,000 of the 350,000 babies born each day die within the first month of life, and 98 percent of those deaths occur in developing countries. The interventions that save newborn lives depend on a functioning, sustainable health system, planning and resource allocation at the local level, and improved nutritional and other household practices. Read more. (PDF: 268KB)

March 2003
How does potential demand for contraceptives vary among regions? This demand is defined by adding total contraceptive use to total unmet need — the number of women who would prefer to avoid a pregnancy but do not use contraception. Demand in sub-Saharan Africa, where contraceptive use is lowest, averages 44 percent of married women, compared with 70 percent in other developing regions. Read more.

February 2003
How extensive is contraceptive use among Vietnamese married women? Roughly 74 percent of married women 15 to 49 years old in Vietnam use some form of contraception. Some 61 percent use modern methods, according to PRB's 2002 World Population Data Sheet. Read more.

February 2003
What percentage of India's population is under age 15? Some 36 percent, compared with 4 percent in the 65 years and older category, according to PRB's 2002 World Population Data Sheet. Read more.

December 2002
How young is the U.S. population? More than one-fifth of the U.S. population was under age 15 in 2002, compared with less than one-seventh of Japan's population. While some African and Latin American countries have much younger profiles — many with more than one-third of the population under age 15 — continued U.S. growth is expected. By 2050, the population is projected to grow by nearly 140 million to a total of 420 million. Read more.

September 2002
How widespread are disabilities related to maternal causes? Roughly half of the nearly 120 million women who give birth around the world each year experience complications during pregnancy. Also, between 15 million and 20 million develop disabilities such as severe anemia, chronic pain, incontinence, damage to the reproductive organs or nervous system, and infertility, according to PRB's Hidden Suffering: Disabilities from Pregnancy and Childbirth in Less Developed Countries.

August 2002
How vulnerable are the world's children to environmental hazards? Children are more vulnerable than adults to environmental hazards, which kill at least 3 million children under age 5 annually. These children breathe more air, drink more water, and eat more food in proportion to their body weight than adults, so they may experience higher rates of exposure to pathogens and pollutants. Behavior, such as putting objects in the mouth, also heightens the risks. Diarrheal infections, most of which are environment-related, killed nearly 2 million children under age 5 in 2001, says PRB's Children's Environmental Health: Risks and Remedies.

July 2002
Which is the most widely used contraceptive method worldwide? Approximately one out of four couples use sterilization as their family planning method, according to PRB's Family Planning Worldwide, which presents survey data for women who are either married or in informal unions. Roughly one-third of all married women in India and China, the world's two population billionaires, have been sterilized. In the industrialized world overall, female sterilization usage stands at 11 percent of couples and male sterilization at 4 percent.

May 2002
How many countries achieved the World Summit for Children goal of a one-third reduction in the death rates of children under five? Between 1990 and 2000, some 63 countries actually achieved the one-third reduction in infant and under-five mortality rates, while more than 100 countries cut those deaths by one-fifth, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Consequently, there are now 3 million fewer deaths of children under age five than at the beginning of the 1990s. Nine of the 14 countries where child deaths have increased are in Africa, where the HIV/AIDS epidemic has sent rates soaring in some places.

March 2002
What proportion of the world's immigrants are in industrialized countries? Of the 160 million-plus immigrants, refugees, asylum-seekers, and authorized and unauthorized migrant workers living outside of their home countries, an estimated 45 percent — some 70 million — are in industrialized countries. See: International Migration: Facing the Challenge.

February 2002
What are some health effects of indoor pollution? Exposure to indoor pollution from traditional fuels such as wood and charcoal are linked to acute respiratory infections in children, chronic bronchitis and asthma, lung cancer, and pregnancy-related problems. Exposure to indoor pollutants kills more than two million people each year, mainly in less developed countries. See PRB's Women, Men, and Environmental Change: The Gender Dimensions of Environmental Policies and Programs.

October 2001
Is there a relationship between malaria and resource-poor settings? A new study published by the Multilateral Initiative on Malaria describes an important connection between severe malaria transmission and poverty. Presented in the American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, the study notes, for instance, that the growth of per capita income in malaria-ridden countries from 1965 to 1990 was only 0.4 percent annually, compared with 2.3 percent for countries with fewer malaria infections.

October 2001
What conditions do Afghanistan's refugees face? For more than two decades, the Afghan population has been shouldering the burden of civil conflict, the brutal effects of which have been exacerbated by acute and prolonged drought, widespread starvation, and especially harsh winters. The result has been massive movements of people within the country and across its borders and a mounting catastrophe in which millions of people rely on humanitarian assistance for survival. For more, see Risks Mount for Afghan Women, Children.

October 2001
How wide is the rich-poor "vaccine gap"? While children in less developed countries may have access to six or seven vaccines, those in more developed nations can expect to receive 11 or 12, according to the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.

June 2001
How large is the "unmet need" for contraceptives? Experts estimate that between 100 million and 150 million women in the less developed world have an "unmet need" for contraceptive methods. These estimates, contained in the Population Reference Bureau report, New Population Policies: Advancing Women's Health and Rights, are based on surveys that include questions about women's reproductive intentions. Demographers define a woman as having an unmet need if she says she would prefer to avoid a pregnancy but is not using a contraceptive method. In some countries, more than one-quarter of married women of reproductive age have an unmet need for methods of family planning.

June 2001
How visible are women in the workforce globally? Around the world, women are entering the workforce as never before, both because they want to and because they need to earn independent incomes. In times of economic difficulty, women's economic contribution to the household budget and the family's well-being increases. The International Labour Organization (ILO) says that women's participation in paid work has increased significantly since the beginning of the 1980s. In fact, women are now more than 40 percent of the global workforce, even though they continue to be concentrated in low-paid, low-skilled jobs. (See the Population Reference Bureau's report, Conveying Concerns: Women Report on Families in Transition, and the ILO's Decent Work for Women: An ILO Proposal to Accelerate the Implementation of the Beijing Platform for Action.)

June 2001
Does the relationship between population and the environment vary by world region? Yes. When most people link population growth and environmental degradation, they are usually referring to less developed countries, where most of the world's people live and where population growth is high. But environmental problems exist in all countries, regardless of the level of development.

Most of the environmental degradation in industrialized countries, where only 20 percent of the world's people live, is attributable to high consumption patterns, according to the Population Reference Bureau report, Human Population: Fundamentals of Growth and Change. Each individual in an industrialized country exerts more pressure on the environment than perhaps 20 to 30 people in the less developed world, notes the report. For example, consumption patterns in the United States are indicative of the industrialized world's disproportionate use of global resources. The United States has 5 percent of the world's population, uses an estimated 33 percent of the world's resources, and causes an estimated 33 percent of the world's pollution. According to one estimate, the average person living in the United States uses at least 30 times the amount of resources as a person living in India.

June 2001
How close is the coast? The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) estimates that about 60 percent of the world's population live within roughly 60 miles of the coastline. UNEP's Global State of the Environment Report 1997 says that more than 3 billion people rely on coastal and marine habitats for food, building sites, transportation, recreation, and waste disposal.

At the same time, says UNEP, about one-third of the world's coastal regions are at high risk of degradation, particularly from land-based sources of pollution and infrastructure development. European coasts are most affected, with some 80 percent at risk, followed by Asia and the Pacific, with 70 percent of the coast at risk. In Latin America, some 50 percent of the mangroves are affected by forestry and aquaculture activities. Oil spills are particular threats in West Asia and the Caribbean, while infrastructure development for the tourism industry puts stress on natural coastal areas around the world, particularly in small-island developing states.

June 2001
What percent of the world's people live in urban settings? The world has experienced unprecedented urban growth in recent decades. In 1900, some 14 percent of the world were urbanites, and 12 cities had 1 million or more inhabitants. By 2000, about 47 percent of the world's population lived in urban areas (about 2.8 billion), and there were more than 400 cities with more than 1 million people, according to the Population Reference Bureau report, Human Population: Fundamentals of Growth and Change. More developed nations were about 76 percent urban, while 40 percent of residents of less developed countries lived in urban areas.

An urban area may be defined by the number of residents, the population density, the percent of persons not dependent upon agriculture, or the provision of such public utilities and services as electricity and education. Some countries define any place with a population of 2,500 or more as urban, while others set a minimum of 20,000. There are no universal standards, and generally, each country develops its own set of criteria for distinguishing urban areas. The United States defines urban as a city, town, or village with a minimum population of 2,500 people. The classification of metropolitan includes both urban areas as well as rural areas that are socially and economically integrated with a particular city.

June 2001
Afghanistan's gender gaps in literacy. The gap in male-female literacy in Afghanistan offers a striking illustration of women's marginal status in that country. While the inequalities in education are significant within South Asia as a whole, the situation in Afghanistan is especially dramatic. Within South Asia, almost twice as many men as women can read and write. In Afghanistan, nearly three times as many men as women are literate. Some 46 percent of Afghan men and a tiny 16 percent of women can read and write, according to The State of the World's Children 2000, a report of the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF).

In this largely rural, war-torn country of nearly 27 million people, men are expected to outlive women. The average girl born today in Afghanistan is expected to live to a meager 44 years, two years less than her male counterpart, according to the Population Reference Bureau's 2001 World Population Data Sheet. This is one of only a few cases in which male longevity is greater than that of females.

In the meantime, the gap between male and female literacy has widened. The difference, which was 27 percentage points in the 1980s, grew to 32 percentage points in the 1990s.

March 2001
Japanese girls in the lead. Baby girls born in Japan today have a life expectancy of 84 years, the highest in the world. Life expectancy is considered a rough measure of a nation's health and economic environment. Girls in Switzerland and San Marino are right behind girls in Japan, with life expectancies of 83 years. Girls in Australia, France, Iceland, Martinique, Spain, and Sweden have life expectancies of 82 years. Boys in Japan, Iceland, Sweden, and Switzerland can expect to live to about 77 — more years of life than any other males.

March 2001
Counting the years: What a difference a century makes! Living to a golden old age in the early 1800s meant reaching your mid-twenties. Babies born in India in 1881, for example, could expect to live a mere 25 years, according to official Indian figures for that year. Life expectancy in the world's second most populous nation has risen about 60 percent in more than a century.

Babies born in the South Asian nation today could expect to live to 60 years, a little below the world average of 64 years, according to UN estimates. This sharp increase in life expectancy — much faster than it ever was in the western nations — is what actually caused the population "explosion" of the latter half of the 20th century.

March 2001
The contraceptive revolution. Fifty-two percent of the world's married women now use modern contraceptive methods, according to the Population Reference Bureau. China's contraceptive prevalence rate — 83 percent — is the highest in the world. In Brazil and Thailand, 70 percent of married women use modern contraceptive methods. This high percentage has been achieved through increased information about reproductive health.

Other high-use countries include Germany (79 percent), Belgium (74 percent), Denmark (74 percent), the United States (71 percent), and the Netherlands (71 percent). More than 20 countries in sub-Saharan Africa have contraceptive prevalence rates below 10 percent. PRB's Population Bulletin, "World Population Beyond Six Billion," notes: "Women's options improved immensely when the pill and the modern IUD became available after 1960. During the 1990s, about 20 percent of women worldwide relied on one of these two methods. New contraceptives, including injectables and implants, became available in many countries in the 1980s. They have become popular methods in some African countries. Female sterilization has been widely adopted in Asia and Latin America and is the most popular single method worldwide. An estimated 17 percent of married women ages 15 to 49 rely on female sterilization to prevent pregnancy."

March 2001
Asia's multimillions. Only one world region has more than one country of over 100 million people. Asia can count China, with 1.2 billion people, India, with 1 billion people, and four other nations. Indonesia, Pakistan, Japan, and Bangladesh have all crossed the 100 million-mark, according to the Population Reference Bureau.

With the exception of the Middle East, every other major world region has just one country of this size. Europe has Russia, North America has the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean has Brazil, and Africa has Nigeria.

March 2001
How does population growth differ between developed and developing countries? The birth rate in developing countries is more than double that of developed countries. This phenomenon will have untold economic, political and environmental ramifications in the years ahead. Virtually all population growth in the foreseeable future is expected to take place in developing countries, while some developed nations could lose population, according to the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). A key measure is the total fertility rate (TFR), or the average number of children born to a woman in her lifetime. A comparison between Niger, the country with the highest birth rate, 7.5 children per woman, and Bulgaria, with one of the lowest birth rates, 1.2 children per woman, illustrates the gap. (See PRB's 2001 World Population Data Sheet.)

October 2000
Immigration — A big contributor to recent Australian population growth. Australia's population has been expanding slowly since the late 1970s, with average annual growth of around 1.2 percent. Current trends indicate that, were it not for immigration, it would take more than a century for Australia to double its population, according to the 2000 World Population Data Sheet of the Population Reference Bureau. Much of the recent growth resulted from immigration, with newcomers contributing a substantial 41 percent of population growth from 1993 through 1998, according to Australian Demographic Statistics (September 1999).

Europe

March 2003
Which industrialized countries have above replacement level fertility? None. The United States was the only one where the average number of children born to women exceeded the 2.1 needed to replace the parents. But the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) has revised the total fertility rates for 2000 and 2001 based on 2000 Census results. The 2001 rate, formerly 2.115, is 2.034. Compared to European countries, however, the United States is growing rapidly because of a higher birth rate and much higher immigration. The full report is available as a PDF on the NCHS website. Read more.

Urbanization is occurring rapidly in many less developed countries, notes the report. It is expected that 60 percent of the world's population will be urban by 2030, and that most urban growth will occur in less developed countries. An urban area may be defined by the number of residents, the population density, the percent of persons not dependent upon agriculture, or the provision of such public utilities and services as electricity and education. Some countries define any place with a population of 2,500 or more as urban, while others set a minimum of 20,000. There are no universal standards, and generally, each country develops its own set of criteria for distinguishing urban areas. The United States defines urban as a city, town, or village with a minimum population of 2,500 people. The classification of metropolitan includes both urban areas as well as rural areas that are socially and economically integrated with a particular city.

March 2001
What caused Sweden's "roller-coaster fertility" between 1975 and 1998? Sweden's roller coaster fertility rates from 1975 to 1998 illustrate why demographic projections cannot be taken for granted. Sweden's total fertility rate (TFR) fell to 1.6 children per woman in 1978, one of the lowest TFRs of any modern state in Europe at the time, according to the Population Reference Bureau (PRB). The country's TFR seemed on a relatively stable track.

In 1983, however, the TFR began a highly unusual sharp rise that brought it above the replacement level fertility of 2.1 children per couple in 1990. Then the rate peaked and fertility made a precipitous drop to 1.5, the lowest in Swedish history. The difference between a TFR of 1.6 and a TFR of 2.1 or greater, it should be remembered, is the difference between adding population and losing population. What happened? Two factors seem to account for the roller-coaster fertility. Changes in maternity laws in the 1980s gave working women paid maternity leave. And if a woman had a second child within two years, she again received full salary during maternity leave. Many women cashed in on the liberal provision in the 1980s.

Not only did the two-year provision lift fertility, but it also absorbed future childbearing by couples who just wanted to replace themselves with two children. In the late 1980s, the Swedish economy fell into a decline, a factor that discouraged women from having children. The public sector was cut back, leaving many women unemployed. It is ironic that a sudden increase in Sweden's fertility that garnered considerable attention at the time has crashed so soon. (For more on fertility rates around the world, go to PRB's DataFinder.)

March 2001
The contraceptive revolution. Fifty-two percent of the world's married women now use modern contraceptive methods, according to the Population Reference Bureau. China's contraceptive prevalence rate-83 percent-is the highest in the world. In Brazil and Thailand, 70 percent of married women use modern contraceptive methods. This high percentage has been achieved through increased information about reproductive health.

PRB's Population Bulletin, "World Population Beyond Six Billion," notes: "Women's options improved immensely when the pill and the modern IUD became available after 1960. During the 1990s, about 20 percent of women worldwide relied on one of these two methods. New contraceptives, including injectables and implants, became available in many countries in the 1980s. They have become popular methods in some African countries. Female sterilization has been widely adopted in Asia and Latin America and is the most popular single method worldwide. An estimated 17 percent of married women ages 15 to 49 rely on female sterilization to prevent pregnancy."

March 2001
Low fertility and aging labor markets. As many industrialized countries may be discovering, the consequences of declining birth rates are different for individuals than they are for society. Having fewer children and delaying childbearing may allow individuals more time and money to invest in each child's personal development. It may also mean having a better chance to attain a higher standard of living.

For society, falling birth rates have led to aging populations and shrinking labor markets. In Europe, this imbalance has resulted in a natural decrease in the region's population, according to UN estimates. But other industrialized nations are looking to immigration to replenish the labor force. For example, the goal of Canada's current government is to increase immigration levels to about one percent of the population, or roughly 300,000 new immigrants a year.

January 2001
Replacement migration. Falling fertility rates are forcing European countries to consider substantial replacement migration to revitalize their aging workforces. UN experts reckon that if Europe wishes to maintain its present (1995) ratio of older citizens to active workers, the European Union would need 135 million immigrants by 2025. Europe's population is expected to decline from 731 million in 2010 to 718 million in 2025. By contrast, Africa's population is projected to jump from 979 million to 1,290 million over the same period.

Compared with Europe, the United States maintains a more balanced age structure through immigration, which accounts for about 30 percent of the nation's annual population increase.

Latin America

April 2003
How extensive is contraceptive use in Latin America? In 2002, 70 percent of married women ages 15 to 44 used family planning in Latin America and the Caribbean — well above the world average of 61 percent and higher than the average for more developed countries (68 percent). Female sterilization and oral contraceptives account for almost two-thirds of all contraceptive use in this region. Read more. (PDF: 376KB)

October 2002
What percentage of U.S. Virgin Islands children live in poverty? While the national economy grew at a record pace during the 1990s, contributing to the lowest child poverty rate in 20 years, the economic situation for children and families in the U.S. Virgin Islands deteriorated. Between 1989 and 1999, the percentage of children in families with incomes below the poverty line grew from 37 percent to 42 percent, notes the KIDS COUNT/PRB report, A First Look at Children in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

October 2002
When do Brazilian adolescents become sexually active? A survey by the Brazilian Center for Analysis and Planning of the Ministry of Health shows that among young people ages 16 to 19, some 61 percent had already engaged in sexual relations. Among those, 40 percent said their first time was before age 15. Boys had sex earlier than girls and blacks earlier than whites. Adolescents who lived with their parents and had formal education tended to initiate sexual activities later.

September 2002
How does income distribution affect health in the Americas? In the mid-1990s, the average life expectancy in low-income countries with small disparities in income levels was one year greater than in wealthier countries with greater disparities, says the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO). Also, the difference in life expectancy between the least unequal populations and the most unequal was 8.2 years. PAHO concludes that for countries with the same income level, the more equal populations receive more than double the gain in life expectancy from reduced cardiovascular disease, as do less equal populations. And the risk of dying a violent death in less equal populations is double that of more equal populations, in both rich and poor countries.

March 2001
Cuba's low fertility. Low fertility rates are usually linked to wealthy countries. But there are notable exceptions. Take the case of Cuba.

Cuba's average birth rate per woman (1.6) is the lowest in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the Population Reference Bureau. It is also the same as that of the industrialized countries of Belgium and the Netherlands and falls below the 2.1 average in the United States.

A number of factors may contribute to this. For one thing, despite the country's battered economy, many indicators for Cuba compare favorably with those of wealthy countries. The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) ranks Cuba 58th in the world in its 1999 human development index, a ranking of 174 countries, based on life expectancy, education, and income. In its gender empowerment measure, which focuses on women's opportunities, the UNDP ranks Cuba 21st in the world. Among developed nations, Japan is ranked 38th and France, 36th.

Life expectancy for Cuban boys and girls combined (75 years) is the same as that of more developed countries as a whole. Also, Cuba's literacy rate for women, ages 15 and over, is 95 percent. For every 100 males in secondary school, there are 105 females, according to PRB's 1998 Women of Our World.

March 2001
Population aging. Worldwide trends toward lower fertility and greater life expectancy have contributed to the phenomenon of "population aging." While the trend has been mainly associated with the industrialized countries of Europe and North America, less developed nations are certainly catching up.

Uruguay is an example. This South American country, where 91 percent of the population lives in urban areas, has a higher percentage of people 60 years and over than Canada and the United States, according a joint publication of the Pan American Health Organization, the U.S. Census Bureau, and the National Institute on Aging. "Aging in the Americas into the XXI Century" notes that 17.3 percent of the Uruguayan population fall into the 60 years and older category, compared with 16.5 percent in the U.S., and 16.3 percent in Canada.

March 2001
The contraceptive revolution. Fifty-two percent of the world's married women now use modern contraceptive methods, according to the Population Reference Bureau. China's contraceptive prevalence rate-83 percent-is the highest in the world. In Brazil and Thailand, 70 percent of married women use modern contraceptive methods. This high percentage has been achieved through increased information about reproductive health.

Middle East / North Africa

September 2002
How many U.S. residents were born in Iraq? Just under 90,000 people born in Iraq were resident in the United States on April 1, 2000, newly released data from the U.S. Census show. Answers to a separate Census 2000 question about residents' ancestry or ethnic origin show 33,000 people claiming only Iraqi ancestry. A further 82,000 people were were reported as "Assyrian/Chaldean/Syraic," descendants of the indigenous, mainly Christian people of the area that includes what is now Iraq. Of those reporting Iraqi ancestry, 29 percent live in Michigan. Of those reporting Assyrian, Chaldean, or Syriac ancestry, 42 percent live in Michigan.

September 2002
Which is the world's most water-scarce region? Home to 6.3 percent of the world’s population, the Middle East and North Africa contains only 1.4 percent of the world’s renewable fresh water and is the most water-scare region. Rapid population growth has exacerbated the water scarcity the region faces, according to PRB's Finding the Balance: Population and Water Scarcity in the Middle East and North Africa.

June 2002
What factors have contributed to Iran's birth rate decline? The decline in the number of births per woman — from 5.6 in 1985 to 2.0 in 2000 — is mainly the result of increased contraceptive use by married women and changes in marriage patterns, says the PRB publication Iran's Family Planning Program: Responding to a Nation's Needs. Women's average age at first marriage rose from 19.7 in 1976 to 22.4 in 1996, and 74 percent of married women practiced family planning in 2000, up from 37 percent in 1976.

April 2002
How young is the population of the West Bank and Gaza? A full 45 percent of the population in the West Bank and 50 percent of the Gaza population are children below the age of 15, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics.

October 2001
Are population pressures creating a fertile ground for conflict in the Middle East? As the campaign against terrorism focuses on extreme political and religious expression in many Middle Eastern countries, burgeoning populations and high unemployment, particularly among educated young men, are at least some of the factors gaining attention. For more, see Are population pressures creating a fertile ground for conflict in the Middle East?

March 2001
Women's labor force participation in the Middle East and North Africa. Despite the growing number of women seeking employment in the Middle East and North Africa, the labor force participation of women in this region still remains the lowest in the world. The women's share of the labor force increased from 22 percent in 1980 to 27 percent in 1997. Outside of this region, women comprise at least one third of the labor force. In the Middle East and North Africa, the employment of women is mostly concentrated in the services sector, as is the case with men.

As a result of its high level of fertility in the recent past, the working-age population is growing rapidly. Women are also staying in school longer and an increasing number of them go off to college. These women then compete for already scarce jobs. Women, particularly younger women, often experience more unemployment and for longer periods than men. According to the United Nations, the unemployment rate among women in North Africa is 24 percent, the highest for any region for both men and women. In a number of the region's countries, young women with college degrees face a higher rate of unemployment than women with high school or lower education. In Jordan in 1996, the unemployment rate among women graduated from two-year community college was as high as 38 percent.

Sources: United Nations, The World's Women 2000, Trends and Statistics; International Labor Organization, World Employment Report 2001: Life at Work in the Information Economy.

March 2001
How quickly is Yemen's population growing? The United Nations projects that the total population of Yemen - a country with one of the lowest per capita incomes in the world - will increase from 18 million in 2000 to more than 100 million by 2050. The UN projects that by mid-century, the country's population will still be growing at more than two-and-a-half percent a year, faster than any other country's projected growth rate. Yemen currently has one of the world's highest birth rates - an average of about 6 children per woman. While the birth rate is expected to drop by half in the next 50 years, Yemen's population will continue to increase rapidly way into the 21st century because the number of women of childbearing years will still be growing. The number of Yemeni women of reproductive age will increase from 3.3 million in 1995 to 9.5 million in 2025. (Sources: UN World Population Prospects: 1998 and 2000 Revisions)

March 2001
How quickly has Egypt's population grown over the last 30 years? With 68 million people, Egypt has about twice the number of inhabitants it did 30 years ago. By the year 2025, Egypt's population is projected to reach 95 million, according to the UN World Population Prospects: 2000 Revision. This high rate of population growth is due to a rapid decline in mortality (particularly infant and child mortality) and a slow decline in fertility. The total fertility rate in Egypt was 5.3 children per woman in 1980, and 3.4 in 1998, according to the 1998 Demographic and Health Surveys. Despite this fertility decline, the population is expected to grow because an increasing number of young women are entering their childbearing years.

January 2001
Where are Palestinian refugees living? There are 3.8 million Palestinians registered as refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip, according to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) (www.un.org/unrwa/refugees/me.html). Jordan has the largest share of the Palestinian refugees living within its borders: 1.6 million. The Gaza Strip holds the second largest Palestinian refugee population, with more than 825,000 people registered as refugees. Only one-third of the Palestinian refugee population lives in refugee camps. The Gaza Strip has the largest number living in camps: close to half a million.

North America

April 2003
How many high school dropouts are there in the United States? The percentage of U.S. teens ages 16 to 19 who were dropouts fell from 11 percent in 1990 to about 10 percent in 2000, when 1.6 million teens were dropouts. Thirteen states had rates higher than the national average in 2000. The dropout rate was highest in Nevada (16 percent), Arizona (15 percent), and Georgia (14 percent). Read more. (PDF: 807KB)

April 2003
How many U.S. centenarians did Census 2000 record? Some 50,000 Americans were reported as having crossed the century mark. Centenarians account for less than 0.2 percent of the 35 million people 65 years or older, and this is widely believed to be an overestimate because of chronic overreporting at older ages. Read more.

Why do many people in the U.S. who want to adopt children look abroad? Adopting within the United States is legally complicated, slow, and costly, making it difficult to adopt children while they are still infants. Less than 2 percent of children adopted through the U.S. foster care system in 1998 were infants, compared with 46 percent of children adopted from abroad. Read more.

How young is the U.S. population? More than one-fifth of the U.S. population was under age 15 in 2002, compared with less than one-seventh of Japan's population. While some African and Latin American countries have much younger profiles — many with more than one-third of the population under age 15 — continued U.S. growth is expected. By 2050, the population is projected to grow by nearly 140 million to a total of 420 million. Read more.

November 2002
Which U.S. congressional district has the highest percentage of poor children? New York's 16th District (which includes much of the South Bronx) has the highest percentage of children in poverty in the nation: 52 percent. José Serrano will be serving that district, which is also one of the three districts with the youngest populations; over a third of the residents are under age 18. Read more.

August 2002
Which U.S. states appeal most to native-born and foreign-born migrants? The states that drew the most domestic migrants in the 1990s were in the south and west of the country, including Georgia, North Carolina, and Arizona. These states attracted residents from congested and more expensive coastal states — including California, New York, and New Jersey — and from midwestern states, such as Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio. Most foreign-born migrants still go to California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, and New Jersey, according to PRB's Population Today.

July 2002
What percentage of the U.S. population lives in poverty? In 2000, 11 percent of the population was officially poor, according to the poverty income guidelines of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget. In 2000, a single mother with two children needed $13,874 to avoid being counted as poor; a two-parent, two-child family needed just $17,463. In contrast, the 2000 median income for U.S. families was $50,891, notes PRB's Poverty in America: Beyond Welfare Reform.

June 2002
How quickly is the U.S. population aging? As a result of declining birth rates and increasing longevity, the percentage of those 65 years or older in the United States rose from 8.2 percent in 1950 to 12.6 percent today. By 2030, some 20 percent of Americans will by over the age of 65, according to the PRB publication, Government Spending in an Older America.

May 2002
How does the average number of work years of US women compare with that of US men? Women's work life was little more than one-third that of men in 1950. By the late 1990s, however, the average work life of women had grown to 86 percent of men's, according to the Population Reference Bureau's Population Today. For men, the average work life fell from 39 years in 1950 to 37 years by the late 1990s. By contrast, women's average work life rose steadily and rapidly, from about 14 years in 1950 to nearly 32 years by the late 1990s. Higher levels of education were associated with longer work life.

April 2002:
How diverse is the U.S. black population? Immigration has made the black population in the United States more heterogeneous. Between 1970 and 2000, the share of foreign-born people in the black population rose from 1.3 percent to 7.8 percent. Growth was highest in Florida, where foreign-born blacks increased from 1.1 percent to 22 percent. The immigrants come from many countries in the Caribbean and Africa, with the largest percentages from Haiti (18 percent); Jamaica (15 percent); the Dominican Republic (7 percent); and Trinidad and Tobago (4 percent).

March 2002
How often are U.S. children the victims of homicide? Homicide is the 15th leading cause of death for U.S. infants, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC has found that infants face the greatest risk of homicide on their day of birth. The period with the second highest peak in risk for infants is the eighth week of life when their constant, daily crying is greatest. See: Risk of Homicide High Among U.S. Infants.

February 2002
To what extent are U.S. states promoting access to contraceptives? Seventeen states require employers to provide insurance coverage for prescription contraceptives when they cover preventive drugs, in line with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission ruling. Twelve of these states include in their laws clauses that allow employers and insurers to refuse contraceptives coverage on religious or moral grounds, says the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League (NARAL).

August 2001
Is it common in the United States for mothers of preschoolers to be in the work force? Not only has the number of women in the U.S. labor force tripled over the last 40 years, the proportion of working mothers of young children has more than quadrupled. While American women were entering the labor force well before the turn of the last century, it is only during the last 30 years that the employment of mothers of preschoolers — including infants — has become common. Today, almost two-thirds of mothers of preschoolers and, even more strikingly, married mothers of children under age 1, are in the work force.

June 2001
Husbands and wives and the U.S. workforce. The U.S. Census Bureau shows that the Ozzie and Harriet model, in which the husband works and the wife stays at home, does not represent the typical family in today's U.S. workplace. In a more accurate portrayal of American families, Harriet would enter the workforce and might even earn more money than her husband. In married-couple households in which both husband and wife are employed, over 25 percent of women earned more money in 1999 than their husbands did the previous year. And in dual-earner households in which both the husband and wife are working full-time this number increases to 31 percent. (For more information, go to PRB's AmeriStat website.)

June 2001
Education highs and lows among the foreign-born in the United States. Public policy initiatives often stress education as a means of guaranteeing a well-paid, productive population. In general, a person with a college degree earns more money and has more employment opportunities than a person with only a high school degree or less.

This is of particular concern to immigrant communities. U.S. Census Bureau figures for 1998 show that persons born in the United States are more than twice as likely to have completed high school compared with the foreign-born.

By contrast, the percentage of native- and foreign-born persons with college degrees is almost identical. In fact, foreign-born persons are slightly more likely to have college degrees. This reveals a dichotomy within the immigrant community: One group is highly skilled and college educated, and can expect to compete with native-born persons for well-paying jobs, while the other group consists largely of less educated migrant workers.

This dichotomy among the foreign-born is evident when we compare educational attainment among persons of Hispanic and Asian descent. More than 40 percent of Asians finished four years of college, compared with only 11 percent of Latinos. Hispanics are about twice as likely as blacks and three times more likely than whites to drop out of high school. (For more information, go to PRB's AmeriStat website.)

June 2001
Are more people in the United States choosing to be single? Over the past 30 years, the percentage of persons who have never been married has increased from about 22 percent to 28 percent, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The major increases in the never-married population have occurred among blacks. Between 1975 and 1999, the percentage of blacks who have never been married increased from 32 percent to 44 percent. And the percentage of blacks who are married declined from over 42 percent in 1975 to 32 percent in 1999. (For more information, go to PRB's AmeriStat website.)

May 2001
How bilingual are Canadians? Canada's two official languages, English and French, are not spoken in equal numbers of homes, according to Statistics Canada. About 19.6 million Canadians (69 percent of the population) generally speak English at home, including 530,000 who speak another language. By comparison, 6.5 million Canadians (23 percent of the population) speak French at home, including nearly 200,000 who also speak another language. Just 134,000 Canadians speak both official languages at home. Of the Canadians who speak French at home, 90 percent (5.9 million) live in Quebec. (Statistics Canada, accessed at www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb, March, 2001)

May 2001
What languages are spoken in Canadian and U.S. homes? In both the United States and Canada, a noticeable minority of residents does not speak the official language of their country. The 1990 U.S. Census found that 31.9 million Americans ages 5 and over (14 percent of the population) spoke a language other than English at home. In Canada, which has two official languages, a smaller percentage of the population speaks a different language at home. Statistics Canada shows that nearly 2.6 million persons (9 percent of the population) primarily speak languages other than English and French at home.

March 2001
What percent of the U.S. population is multiracial? The 2000 Census was the first that allowed people to mark more than one race. The Census Bureau added this option because of increasing rates of interracial marriage and the growing population — especially children and minorities — that identifies with more than one race. Of the 281.4 million people counted in the census, about 6.8 million (2.4 percent) identified with two or more races. About 4 percent of children were identified as multiracial, compared with 2 percent of adults. The most common multiracial combinations in the 2000 Census were white and American Indian and Alaska Native (1 million); white and Asian (868,000); white and black (785,000); and black and American Indian and Alaska Native (182,000). The multiracial population also included 3.2 million people — primarily Hispanic/Latino respondents — who reported "some other race" in combination with one or more other races.

March 2001
How many "Cablinasians" are there in the United States? In 1997, after his 1997 Masters Tournament win, Tiger Woods coined the term "Cablinasian" to describe his white, black, Thai, Chinese, and American Indian background. The 2000 Census was the first that allowed people like Tiger to select multiple races, and results show that he is not alone. There were 10,672 people who reported a combination of white, black, Asian, and American Indian races. This may sound like a sizeable group, but it is only a small fraction (0.2 percent) of the total people who marked more than one race (6.8 million). And in the United States as a whole, only 1 person in every 26,370 reported this rare combination.

February 2001
Are more young Americans living with their parents today than they were in 1970? As a declining share of young adults in the United States choose married life, a greater share are living with parents or on their own, according to a Population Bulletin of the Population Reference Bureau. The Bulletin, "American Families," by Suzanne M. Bianchi and Lynne M. Casper, notes that the percentage of young men living in their parents' home was 57 percent in 2000, about the same as in 1970, while the percentage increased for young women, from 39 percent to 47 percent.

February 2001
In what states do most African Americans live? African Americans in the United States may be the most widely dispersed minority group in the country, but they are still highly concentrated in southern U.S. states. As late as 1910, 89 percent of all blacks resided in the South, a legacy of the pre-Civil War plantation economy, according to the September 1999 Population Bulletin of the Population Reference Bureau. The Bulletin, "America's Racial and Ethnic Minorities," notes that blacks began to move to the industrial cities of the North when the cheap labor supplied by European immigrants was cut off during World War I. Following World War II, blacks continued to move north and also began migrating to a few large cities in the West, mostly in California. Blacks were drawn by California's strong economy and relatively benign race relations, and the state's blacks have fared well relative to blacks in other parts of the country. In 1997, however, only 9 percent of blacks lived in the West. More than half-55 percent-of African Americans (including black Hispanics) lived in the South. Another 36 percent lived in the Northeast and Midwest, mostly in metropolitan areas.

January 2001
How much has the immigrant population increased in the United States over the last 100 years? A dramatic increase in the U.S. foreign-born population took place between 1970 and 1998 as a result of legislation passed in 1965 that relaxed immigration barriers. The foreign-born population increased from 9.6 million to 24.4 million. About a third of the current foreign-born population has arrived in the United States since 1990. Despite the recent rise, however, the percentage of the population that was born outside of the United States was lower in 1998 (9 percent) than at the turn of the century (14 percent).

December 2000
Where is the healthiest place to live in the United States? The healthiest place to live, judging from death rates that take into account the age distribution of the population, is the state of Hawaii. Minnesota comes in second, followed by Utah, North Dakota, and Colorado. The District of Columbia has far higher mortality than any state, followed by Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and Tennessee. In part, these geographic variations reflect the variation in the proportion of people of different races living in each state. Hawaii has by far the largest proportion of Asian Americans, who have the lowest mortality rates among American racial and ethnic groups, and the District has a high proportion of African Americans, who have the highest mortality rates.

Sub-Saharan Africa

At what ages do Zimbabwean young people begin sexual activity? A UNICEF study conducted in 2001 in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe's second largest city, shows that 80 percent of in-school youth had their first sexual encounter between ages 11 and 15. Read more.

July 2002
What percentage of married women in Africa use condoms? Approximately 1 percent, according to PRB's Family Planning Worldwide, which presents survey data for women who are either married or in informal unions. Condom use for these women worldwide is 5 percent, compared with 15 percent for those in more developed countries.

June 2001
How is HIV/AIDS affecting schooling in Africa? The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS says that AIDS is reducing the number of children in schools in the countries in Africa that are most affected by the epidemic. A few factors account for the decline. According to UNAIDS, women who are infected with the virus have fewer children and up to a third of the children born to these women are themselves infected and may not survive to school age. Children who have been orphaned by AIDS may be forced to abandon their schooling because there is no money available to send them or because they have to start earning a living.

As HIV/AIDS kills workers at all levels of the workforce in African countries, teachers are also seriously affected. A 1999 UNICEF survey in Malawi found that the rate of HIV infection among teachers was 30 percent. UNAIDS notes that in Zambia, teachers are increasingly dying of AIDS, while many more go to work only sporadically because they are ill. (For more, see UNAIDS' Report on the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic, June 2000.)

May 2001
What is the impact of the AIDS epidemic on young people worldwide? The Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) calculates that half of all new HIV infections around the world occur among youth between the ages of 15 and 24. When children under the age of 14 are added, the total increases to 60 percent of new infections. According to UNAIDS, the vast majority of these young people live in less developed countries where AIDS is concentrated.

The context within which young people live influences their exposure to HIV. Among the most vulnerable groups are those who live on the edges of society, including orphans, refugees, street children, those who grow up in urban slums, or those who face isolation because of their sexual orientation. These young people often have limited access to education, health information, and health services. Some may increase their risks by selling sex to survive; others may be abducted and sold into the sex trade. Many take up injecting drug use and expose themselves to high HIV risks by sharing needles.

February 2001
Where is desertification most severe? Desertification is generally viewed as an advanced stage of land degradation. The United Nations defines desertification as a destruction of the biological potential of the land that can lead to desert-like conditions. Desertification is most severe in Africa. Some 45 percent of Africa's population lives in drylands that are susceptible to desertification, according to the UN Development Program's Office to Combat Desertification and drought (www.undp.org/seed/unso). In Kenya, a three-year drought has withered crops and killed livestock, leaving thousands of people without adequate food supplies. In neighboring Tanzania, widespread tree felling threatens to transform much of the country's forest into desert. Fire is a primary cause of desertification in the Sahel region of North Africa, where the degradation of drylands is especially pronounced. (For more information, see "Africa's Struggle With Desertification," on PRB's website.)