Population
The population of Tonga is 106,146 (July 2011 est.). 37.2% are under 15, 56.7% 15 to 64, and 6.1% over 64. The birth rate is 24.7/1000, the death rate is 4.88/1000, and the net migration rate is -17.9/1,000. At birth, the sex ratio in Tonga is 1.03 males/female; the ratio in the total population is 1.01 males/female. The 2006 Tongan census gave a fertility rate of 4.2 children/woman, although the 2011 World Factbook estimate is 3.55 children/woman.
Most of the Tongan population is Polynesian, with about 300 Europeans.
Christianity is the predominant religion in Tonga, with 37.3% of the population belonging to the Free Wesleyan Church, 16.8% Mormon, 15.6% Free Church of Tonga, and 11.3% Roman Catholic. Other Christian denominations make up 14%. Other religions make up 4% of the population, while 1% claim no affiliation.
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Tonga
Famous quotes containing the word population:
“O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)
“We in the West do not refrain from childbirth because we are concerned about the population explosion or because we feel we cannot afford children, but because we do not like children.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“A multitude of little superfluous precautions engender here a population of deputies and sub-officials, each of whom acquits himself with an air of importance and a rigorous precision, which seemed to say, though everything is done with much silence, Make way, I am one of the members of the grand machine of state.”
—Marquis De Custine (17901857)