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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Uruguay
Index
Figure 5. Population by Age and Sex, 1985
Based on information from Uruguay, Direccion General de Estadistica y Censos, Anuario estadistico, 1988, Montevido, 1989.
A flea market in Montevideo
Courtesy Edmundo Flores
In 1988 Uruguay's population was estimated at
3,081,000, up
somewhat from the 2,955,241 inhabitants recorded in the
1985
census. From 1981 to 1988, the population growth rate
averaged
about 0.7 percent per year. In South America, only Guyana
and
Suriname had a lower growth rate. According to
projections, the
growth rate would continue in the 0.6 to 0.7 range through
the
year 2020, resulting in an estimated total population of
3,152,000 in 1995, 3,264,000 in 2000, and 3,679,000 in
2020 (see
table 4, Appendix).
A major factor in Uruguay's low population growth rate
was
its relatively low birth rate. The average birth rate for
1990
was the lowest in Latin America at just 17 per 1,000
inhabitants.
Significant levels of emigration also inhibited the growth
of the
population. At the same time, the average life expectancy
of
Uruguayans (seventy years for men and seventy-six years
for women
in 1990) was relatively high. Together, the comparatively
low
birth rate, net emigration, and long life expectancy gave
Uruguay
an aging population with a pyramidal structure more
typical of a
developed country than of a Third World country
(see
fig. 5).
In addition to its remarkably low population growth
rate, low
birth rate, high life expectancy, and aging population,
Uruguay
also was notable for its extremely high level of
urbanization.
According to the 1985 census, 87 percent of Uruguay's
population
could be classified as urban. Moreover, this trend was
expected
to continue because the urban population was continuing to
grow
at a faster rate than the population as a whole, while the
rural
population growth rate was well under that for the total
population. In the 1981-88 period, Uruguay's urban
population
grew at a rate of 0.9 percent, while its rural population
grew at
a rate of only 0.3 percent (as compared with a total
population
growth rate of 0.7 percent).
Ethnically, Uruguay enjoyed a high level of
homogeneity. Its
population was estimated to be nearly 90 percent white,
having
descended from the original Spanish colonists as well as
from the
many European immigrants, chiefly from Spain and Italy,
who
flocked to Uruguay in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth
centuries. (The remainder were primarily black and
mestizo, or
people of mixed Indian and European ancestry.)
Data as of December 1990
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