Algeria - Demographics

Demographics

As of a January 2010 estimate, Algeria's population was 34.9 million, who are mainly Arab-Berber ethnically. At the outset of the 20th century, its population was approximately four million. About 90% of Algerians live in the northern, coastal area; the inhabitants of the Sahara desert are mainly concentrated in oases, although some 1.5 million remain nomadic or partly nomadic. More than 25% of Algerians are under the age of 15.

The Berbers are the indigenous ethnic group of Algeria and are believed to be the ancestral stock on which elements from the Phoenicians, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks as well as other ethnic groups have contributed to the ethnic makeup of Algeria. Furthermore, the country has a diverse population ranging from light-skinned, gray-eyed Chaoui and blue-eyed Kabyles in the Atlas Mountains to very dark-skinned populations in the Sahara (e.g., the Tuaregs). Descendants of Andalusian refugees are also present in the population of Algiers and other cities.

Linguistically, approximately 73% of Algerians speak Algerian Arabic, while about 27% speak one of the Berber languages mainly found in the Kabyle and Chaoui regions. French is widely understood, and Standard Arabic (Fos'haa) is taught to and understood by most Algerian-Arabic-speaking youth.

Europeans account for less than 1% of the population, inhabiting almost exclusively the largest metropolitan areas. However, during the colonial period there was a large (15.2% in 1962) European population, consisting primarily of French people, in addition to Spaniards in the west of the country, Italians and Maltese in the east, and other Europeans such as Greeks in smaller numbers. Known as Pieds-Noirs, European colonists were concentrated on the coast and formed a majority of the population of Oran (60%) and important proportions in other large cities including Algiers and Annaba. Almost all of this population left during or immediately after the country's independence from France. Housing and medicine shortages continue to be pressing problems in Algeria. Failing infrastructure and the continued influx of people from rural to urban areas has overtaxed both systems. According to the United Nations Development Programme, the country has one of the world's-highest per-housing-unit occupancy rates for housing, and government officials have publicly stated that the country has an immediate shortfall of 1.5 million housing units.

Women make up 70% of the country's lawyers and 60% of its judges, and also dominate the field of medicine. Increasingly, women are contributing more to household income than men. Sixty percent of university students are women, according to university researchers.

USCRI estimates that 95,700 refugees and asylum-seekers have sought refuge in Algeria. This includes roughly 90,000 from Western Sahara and 4,100 from Palestine. Between 90,000 and 165,000 Sahrawis from Western Sahara live in the Sahrawi refugee camps, in western Algerian Sahara desert. As of 2009, 35,000 Chinese migrant workers lived in Algeria.