This morning I had the time to scan through the world demography web page which published the July 07 estimates. Whilst Mauritius birth rate is given as 15.26 per 1000 population, it is worth to note that the top score is held by Niger at 50.16 per 1000 population, i.e over three times that of our country whilst Hong Kong trails at 7.34 per 1000 population i.e.half of our rate.

 

The world population stands at 6,602,224,175 with a growth of 1.167%. The sex ration figures are telling.

Sex ratio

at birth: 1.07 male(s)/female
under 15 years: 1.064 male(s)/female
15-64 years: 1.024 male(s)/female
65 years and over: 0.781 male(s)/female
total population: 1.014 male(s)/female (2007 est.)

These are some of the some indicators that interested me.

Religions

Christians 33.03% (of which Roman Catholics 17.33%, Protestants 5.8%, Orthodox 3.42%, Anglicans 1.23%), Muslims 20.12%, Hindus 13.34%, Buddhists 5.89%, Sikhs 0.39%, Jews 0.23%, other religions 12.61%, non-religious 12.03%, atheists 2.36% (2004 est.)

Languages

Mandarin Chinese 13.69%, Spanish 5.05%, English 4.84%, Hindi 2.82%, Portuguese 2.77%, Bengali 2.68%, Russian 2.27%, Japanese 1.99%, Standard German 1.49%, Wu Chinese 1.21% (2004 est.)
note: percents are for “first language” speakers only and therefore do not add to 100%

Literacy

definition: age 15 and over can read and write
total population: 82%
male: 87%
female: 77%
note: over two-thirds of the world’s 785 million illiterate adults are found in only eight countries (India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Indonesia, and Egypt); of all the illiterate adults in the world, two-thirds are women; extremely low literacy rates are concentrated in three regions, South and West Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Arab states, where around one-third of the men and half of all women are illiterate (2005 est.)