Demographics of Sweden

The demographics of Sweden have changed significantly as a result of immigration since World War II. In addition to the ethnic Swedish majority, Sweden has historically had smaller minorities of Sami people in the northernmost parts of the country and Finnish people in the Mälardalen and in the north of Sweden.

Demographics of Sweden, Data of FAO, year 2005 ; Number of inhabitants in thousands.

Ethnicity

Beside the Swedes, the Sweden-Finns are the largest ethnic minority comprising approximately 50,000 indigenous people along the Swedish-Finnish border, and 450,000 first and second generation immigrated ethnic Finns. Also in the farthest North a small indigenous population of Samis live. About 100,000 are Assyrian/Syriacs in Sweden, and 40,000 living in Stockholm county.

Language

Main articles: Swedish Language and Languages of Sweden

The Swedish language is by far the dominating language in Sweden, and is used by the government administration. The indigenous Finno-Ugric languages were repressed well into the 1960s. Since 1999 Sweden has five officially recognized minority languages: Sami, Meänkieli, Standard-Finnish, Romani chib and Yiddish. The Sami language, spoken by about 7,000 people in Sweden, may be used in government agencies, courts, preschools and nursing homes in the municipalities of Arjeplog, Gällivare, Jokkmokk and Kiruna and its immediate neighbourhood. Similarly, Finnish and Meänkieli can be used in the municipalities of Gällivare, Haparanda, Kiruna, Pajala and Övertorneå and its immediate neighbourhood. Finnish is also official language, along with Swedish, in the city of Eskilstuna.

The largest minority languages are those spoken by immigrants, the most popular of which are Turkish, Finnish, Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, Arabic, Aramaic, Persian, Spanish, Kurdish, English and Somali.^[1]

Emigration

In the 19th century, Sweden's yearly population growth rate peaked at 1.2% (i.e. it doubled in less than 60 years), compared to 1% today (migration excluded). This considerable population growth rate led, before the Industrial Revolution, to a pauperization of the rural population, for each generation inherited smaller and smaller shares. Due to years of crop failure in the 1840s and 1860s, the U.S. Homestead Act of 1862, and to a lesser extent religious persecution, emigration started and grew. Between 1850 and 1930 1,050,000 Swedes emigrated (re-migration excluded), chiefly to Canada, U.S. and to Denmark. If they had not left, Sweden's population would have been about 2,000,000 higher today, given that famine and civil war hadn't been the outcome of their staying. (After 1929 the net-migration has been directed towards Sweden.)

The re-migration of Swedish nationals from the U.S. was culturally more important than the absolute figures reveal. The re-migrants often re-settled in their native parish, where their relative wealth and foreign experience ensured a prestigious position in the community. U.S. views, values and not the least world-view followed the re-migrants, ensuring a popular perception of closeness to U.S., contrary to the situation in for instance neighbouring Denmark or Finland (and contrary to the Swedish elite's closeness to Germany and Europe).

Immigration

As of 2007, 17.3% of the population had foreign origins.^[2]

Immigration increased markedly with World War II. Historically, the most numerous of foreign born nationalities are ethnic Germans from Germany and other Scandinavians from Denmark and Norway. In short order, 70,000 war children were evacuated from Finland, of which 15,000 remained in Sweden. Also, many of Denmark's nearly 7,000 Jews who were evacuated to Sweden decided to remain there.

From the late 1940's and until 1973 work-force immigration dominated, peaking in the late 1960s. Finns make up about 5% of the whole population. The occupant population of northern Sweden, the Sami people, (a ethnic group living in 4 countries) is only about 20,000 persons.

The largest immigrant groups in Sweden are Finns, Russians (the former USSR including Ukrainians and Russian Jews), Turks from Turkey and Cyprus, Greeks from Greece and Cyprus, Albanians from Albania and the Republic of Macedonia, and South Slavic peoples from the former Yugoslavia (namely Serbia, Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina) representing both work-force immigration and war refugees.

Migration triggered by political crises and economic disparities in the second half of the 20th century include refugee groups of Persians; Kurds from Iraqi Kurdistan and Turkey; Palestinians; Koreans from South Korea and Manchuria, China; Filipinos; Vietnamese; Argentinans; Baluchis from Pakistan; Moroccans; Spaniards; Sicilians from Italy; Hungarians; and Chileans.

Sweden has taken in refugees from various countries fleeing persecution, including people from the former East Germany, Poland, Iran, Myanmar, Vietnam, Nicaragua and Guatemala; and more recently from conflict-zones in the former Yugoslavia, Chechnya, Libya, Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Somalia.

In fact, Sweden has a history of providing refuge to asylum seekers. On a smaller scale, it took in political refugees from Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia after their countries were invaded by the Soviet Union in 1956 and 1968 respectively. Some tens of thousands of American draft dodgers from the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970's also found refuge in Sweden.

Today, Sweden has one of the largest exile communities of Assyrian Christians (also known as Syriacs, Suryoye, Arameans and Chaldeans).

A sizable community from the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) arrived during the Second World War.^[3]

Religion

Although only one fifth of Swedes in one investigation chose to describe themselves as believing in God ^[4], the majority (78%) of the population belongs to the Church of Sweden, the Lutheran church that separated from the state in 2000. This is because until recently, those who had family members in the church automatically became members at birth. Other Christian denominations in Sweden include Roman Catholic (see Catholic Church of Sweden), Orthodox, Baptist, and other evangelical Christian churches (frikyrkor = "free churches").

Some of the Sami practice Animism. There are also a number of Muslims, Buddhists, Bahá'í and Jews in Sweden, mainly from immigration. Before the 11th century, Swedes adhered to Norse paganism, worshiping Æsir gods, with its centre at the Temple in Uppsala. With Christianization in the 11th century, the laws of the country were changed, forbidding worship of other deities into the late 19th century. Today, Germanic Neopaganism such as the Asatru has grown rapidly in membership and estimates that nearly 10 percent of the Swedish population may adhere to several forms of neopagan religious practices.

Statistics

According to Statistiska centralbyrån (Statistics Sweden), Sweden's population reached 9,000,000 on August 12, 2004^[update]. See the Swedish population web counter.

• Population: 9,081,100 (July 2006^[update] est.)
• Population growth rate: 0.72% (As of 2006^[update] est.)
• Population growth: Averaging 1 person/15 minutes
• Net migration rate: 0.91 migrant(s)/1,000 population (As of 2001^[update] est.)

• Total fertility rate: 1.85 children born/woman (2006 est.)
• Infant mortality rate: 2.8 deaths/1,000 live births (As of 2006^[update] est.)

• Life expectancy at birth: 79.71 years
  • Male: 77.07 years
  • Female: 82.5 years (As of 2001^[update] est.)

Births and deaths

Age structure

• 0-14 years: 18.19% (male 828,308; female 786,353)
• 15-64 years: 64.53% (male 2,911,949; female 2,814,730)
• 65 years and over: 17.28% (male 649,296; female 884,417) (As of 2001^[update] est.)

Sex ratio

• at birth: 1.06 male(s)/female
• under 15 years: 1.06 male(s)/female
• 15-64 years: 1.03 male(s)/female
• 65 years and over: 0.78 male(s)/female
• total population: 0.98 male(s)/female (2008 est.)

Literacy

• definition: age 15 and over can read and write
• total population: 99% (As of 2003^[update] est.)

Nationality

noun: Swede(s)

adjective: Swedish

See also

• Statistics Sweden
• Municipalities of Sweden
• Demographical center of Sweden

References

• CIA World Factbook [1]

External links

• Population Statistics – in English
• Statistics Sweden – Official Data Base