Demographics of Argentina


 

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This article is about the demographics features of the population of Argentina, including distribution, ethnicity, economic status and other.

Contents

Origins and ethnicity

German colony in Villa Gral Belgrano.
German colony in Villa Gral Belgrano.
Children at school, Buenos Aires.
Children at school, Buenos Aires.
Children at a party, Rosario.
Children at a party, Rosario.

Argentina, along with other areas of new settlement like Canada, Australia or New Zealand is a melting pot of different peoples, both autochthonous and immigrants. Citizens of predominant European descent make up the great majority of the population, with estimates varying from 89.7%[1] to 97%[2] of the total population. The last national census, based on self-ascription, indicated a similar figure, in that only 2% declared to be Amerindian of first-generation Mestizo.citation needed

The most common ethnic groups are Italian and Spaniard (mostly Galicians and Basques). There are also significant Germanic, Slavic, British and French populations.

Waves of immigrants from European countries arrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The main contributors were Spain, Italy, France (mostly settled in Buenos Aires city and province), Eastern European nations such as Croatia, Poland, Russia, Romania, Ukraine and the Balkans (especially Greece, Serbia and Montenegro), Switzerland, Germany, the United Kingdom and Ireland (Buenos Aires and Patagonia), and Scandinavia (especially Sweden). Smaller waves of settlers from Australia, South Africa and the United States are recorded in Argentine immigration records. By the 1910s, over 30 percent of the country's population was non-native Argentine after immigration rates peaked, and half of Buenos Aires' population was foreign-born.[3][4]

The overwhelming majority of Argentina's Jewish community (about 2% of the population) derives from immigrants of Northern, Central, and Eastern European origin (Ashkenazi Jews). Argentina's Jewish population is by far the largest Jewish community in all of Latin America and is the fifth largest in the world. Buenos Aires itself is said to have 100,000 practicing Jews, making it one of the largest Jewish urban centers in the world (see also History of the Jews in Argentina).

Small numbers of people from Asia have also settled Argentina, mainly in Buenos Aires. The first Asian-Argentines were of Japanese descent, but Koreans, Vietnamese, Chinese and Laotians soon followed.

Colonies

Most immigrants, regardless of origin, settled in the city of Buenos Aires or around (Greater Buenos Aires or Buenos Aires Province). However, in the first stages of immigration, some formed colonies (especially agricultural colonies) in other parts of the country, often encouraged by the Argentine government and/or sponsored by private individuals and organizations.

Many Scandinavian, British (English and Scottish) and Irish immigrants settled in Patagonia; today, the Chubut Valley has a significant Welsh-descended population and retains many aspects of Welsh culture. But since the 1980s, many Welsh Argentines began to emigrate to Canada and Australia.

German and Swiss colonies settled in the provinces of Entre Ríos, Misiones, Formosa, Córdoba Province and Patagonia, as well as in Buenos Aires itself. As many as 8 million may be of German ancestry, third largest after Italian and Spanish.citation needed

Immigration from the Chilean island of Chiloé made up much of the Chilean immigration to the southern region of Patagonia during the late 19th century.

Indigenous peoples

Impression of a Mapuche couple.
Impression of a Mapuche couple.
See also: Argentine Amerindians

According to the provisional data of INDEC's Complementary Survey of Indigenous Peoples (ECPI) 2004 - 2005,[5] 402,921 indigenous persons (about 1% of the total population) reside in Argentina. An additional 4.5% are labeled as Mestizo.[6]

Emigration

The rate of Argentine emigration to Europe (especially to Spain and Italy[7]) and, to a lesser degree, to North America (mostly to Mexico and the United States) peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s and is noteworthy.

Population dynamics

Argentine population in thousands, data from FAO, year 2005.
Argentine population in thousands, data from FAO, year 2005.

In 2001 census INDEC, Argentina had a population of 36,260,130 million inhabitants, of which 1,527,320, or 4.2%, were born abroad. The population growth rate in 2008 was estimated to be 0.917% annually, with a birth rate of 16.32 live births per 1,000 inhabitants and a mortality rate of 7.54 deaths per 1,000 inhabitants. The net migration rate is a modestly positive, 0.39 immigrants per 1,000 inhabitants, though Argentina is the only Latin American state receiving net immigration. The proportion of people under 15, at 24.6%, is a little below the world average (28%); but the cohort of people 65 and older is relatively high, at 10.8%. The percentage of senior citizens in Argentina has long been second only to Uruguay in Latin America and well above the world average (currently 7%).

The Argentine population has long had one of Latin America's lowest growth rates (recently, about one percent a year) and it also enjoys a comparatively low infant mortality rate. The median age is approximately 29 years and life expectancy at birth is of 75 years. Unlike most developed countries, Argentina does not yet have sub-replacement fertility and the worries and problems associated with it.

Demographic distribution

Population distribution in Argentina
Population distribution in Argentina

Eighty percent of the Argentine population resides in cities or towns of more than two thousand inhabitants, and over one-third lives in the Greater Buenos Aires area. With 11.5 million inhabitants, this sprawling metropolis serves as the focus for national life. This population is unequally distributed across the country, centering in the zone of the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area or "Greater Buenos Aires" (Autonomous City of Buenos Aires and Conurbano Buenos Aires) approximately 12 million people, equivalent to 33% of the total population. This makes Buenos Aires the tenth megalopolis of the 23 existing ones into the world, and the third urban agglomerate of Latin America, behind Mexico City and Sao Paulo.

An additional 1.1 million people live in the metropolitan area of Rosario, and 1.3 million in the city of Córdoba. Most of the Argentine population lives in the corresponding provinces (Buenos Aires, Santa Fe and Córdoba). In 1989, the Argentine government voted but never got to construct a master-planned capital in Viedma near the coastal city of Bahía Blanca, in order to generate development in the central provinces.

The Province of Buenos Aires is the most populated province of the country with 13,827,203 inhabitants (37% of the national population), of which 9.7 million live in Great Buenos Aires and 4.5 millions in the rest of the province. With a similar quantity of population, the neighboring provinces follow Buenos Aires Province in magnitude (in the northern part) of Córdoba and Santa Fe with populations of around 3 million and the City of Buenos Aires with 2.7 million. In total, 60% of the population is concentrated in a region integrated by three provinces (Buenos Aires, Cordoba, Santa Fe) and the City of Buenos Aires with a surface area less than 22% of the country.

Population pyramid of Argentina, 2005.
Population pyramid of Argentina, 2005.

Far from the pointed figures, the provinces that approximately reunite a million inhabitants are Chaco, Corrientes, Entre Rios, Misiones, Salta, Tucumán and Mendoza, overcoming the latter the million and inhabitants' way. Tucumán province emphasizes in this group, with a density of population of 60 hab/km², top that of provinces more populated as Cordoba and Santa Fe and even to the average of the province of Buenos Aires.

Regarding the territorial distribution of the population, the most significant information of the 2001 Census is the decreasing growth of the population of Buenos Aires, which has decreased from second place to fourth place, being overcome by Cordoba and Santa Fe. Also it is prominent that Patagonia is the region with major demographic growth indicating a slow displacement of the population of the country towards the south.

Metropolitan areas by population
Rank Core City Province Pop. Rank Core City Province Pop.
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Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Córdoba
Córdoba

1 Buenos Aires Buenos Aires 12,789,000 11 Resistencia Chaco 377,000
2 Córdoba Córdoba 1,372,000 12 Santiago del Estero Santiago del Estero 357,000
3 Rosario Santa Fe 1,242,000 13 Corrientes Corrientes 345,000
4 Mendoza Mendoza 885,000 14 Bahia Blanca Buenos Aires 304,000
5 Tucumán Tucumán 789,000 15 San Salvador de Jujuy Jujuy 298,000
6 La Plata Buenos Aires 732,000 16 Posadas Misiones 287,000
7 Mar del Plata Buenos Aires 604,000 17 Paraná Entre Ríos 268,000
8 Salta Salta 516,000 18 Neuquén Neuquén 255,000
9 Santa Fe Santa Fe 493,000 19 Formosa Formosa 229,000
10 San Juan San Juan 453,000 20 Catamarca Catamarca 196,000
2008 estimate[8]

Economic status

Financial District in Buenos Aires
Financial District in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires' most populous areas, Recoleta and Palermo, enjoy a high standard of living.
Buenos Aires' most populous areas, Recoleta and Palermo, enjoy a high standard of living.
Main article: Economy of Argentina

Argentines enjoy comparatively high standards of living compared to other Latin American countries; most of the population considers itself middle class[9] and the country has a high Human Development Index score of 0.869. As of 2007, 23% of the population is under the official poverty line[2], and income distribution has become considerably unequal as a result of the 2001 economic crisis.

The city of Salta, like most in Argentina, has also prospered.
The city of Salta, like most in Argentina, has also prospered.

The educational level is good, at least in urban areas with ready access to public schools and universities. The Argentine literacy rate is very high (99%).[10]

In the countryside huge ranches, called estancias, cover much of the Pampa and Patagonia, many of which are the legacy of agricultural colonies established by European immigration during the XIX century.

Some rural people work on estancias, while others own small farms. The soybean boom, the exportation of certain cereals, meats, wines and other fruits, have turned the Argentine countryside into a very profitable business, causing some city people to leave urban areas in search of a more tranquil quality of life.[11]

Linguistic survey

The official language of Argentina is Spanish, and it is spoken by practically the entire population in several different dialects, each having various degrees of Spanish and Italian influences. The most common dialect of Spanish in Argentina is Rioplatense Spanish, and it is so named because it evolved in the central areas around the Río de la Plata basin. Rioplatense Spanish is the standard form of Spanish as used by the Argentine media. Its distinctive feature is widespread voseo, the use of the pronoun vos instead of for the second person singular. It shows Italian influence in vocabulary, lingo and intonation. In addition to Rioplatense Spanish, people of the province of Córdoba have a distinctive intonation pattern. Along the Brazilian border it is quite common to hear a mixture of Portuguese and Spanish called Portuñol.

Some few in the littoral provinces of the north-east speak Guaraní, an Amerindian language, usually mixing it with Spanish. Guaraní as a second language is understood at varying degrees by 3.7% of Argentinians,[12] and holds official status alongside Spanish in the province of Corrientes. Quechua, another Amerindian language, is also spoken by some people but is confined primarily to Santiago del Estero.

Foreign languages

Many Argentines also speak other European languages (Italian, Portuguese, French, German and Serbo-Croatian, as examples) due to the vast number of immigrants from Europe that came to Argentina.[2] Due to the linguistic influences of Rioplatense Spanish from Italian, the average Argentine is well-positioned to understand that language to a substantial degree.

Italian

Argentina has more than 1,500,000 Italian speakers;citation needed this tongue is the second most spoken language in the nationcitation needed Italian immigration from the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century made a lasting and significant impact on the pronunciation and vernacular of the nation's spoken Spanish, giving it an Italian flare. In fact, Italian has contributed so much to Rioplatense that many foreigners mistake it for Italian.[13]

English

English language (a.k.a. Argentine English in Argentina) is a required subject in many schools, and there are also many private English-teaching academies and institutions. Young people have become accustomed to English through movies and the Internet, and knowledge of the language is also required in certain jobs, so most middle-class children and teenagers now speak, read and/or understand it with various degrees of proficiency. According to an official cultural consumption survey conducted in 2006, 42.3% of Argentinians claim to know some English (though only 15.4% of those claimed to have a high level of English comprehension).[12]

German

Standard German is spoken by between 400,000[14] and 500,000[15] Argentines of German ancestry, though it has also been stated that the there could be as much as 2,800,000.[16] German today, is the third or fourth most spoken language in Argentina.

Levantine Arabic

There are sources of around one million Levantine Arabic speakers in Argentina,[14] as a result of immigration from the Middle East, mostly from Syria and Lebanon.

Welsh

There is a small but prosperous community of Argentine Welsh-speakers in the province of Chubut, in the Patagonia region, who descend from 19th century immigrants.

Genetic Studies

Average composition of the Argentine genome (Avena et al, 2006)

A group of researchers belonging to diverse scientific Argentine and French institutions (CONICET, UBA, Centres D'Anthropologie de Toulouse)[17],on the base of information gathered in the Hospital of Clinics and Italian of the City of Buenos Aires, concluded that:

Amerindian Ancestors (Corach-UBA, 2005)

The "Servicio de Huellas Digitales Genéticas" of University of Buenos Aires concluded in 2005 a research directed by the Argentine geneticist Daniel Corach (realized on 320 individuals of 9 provinces) from genetic scoreboards established that 56% of the Argentine population has at least one Amerindian ancestor. The study indicates that the genetic Amerindian characteristic, not necessarily demonstrates physical visible feature. From this percentage, only 10% of the population has exclusively Amerindian ancestors. The remaining 44% of the total population, does not have Amerindian ancestry.[18]

Average composition of the Argentine genome (Seldin et al, U. California 2006)

A group of researchers belonging to diverse scientific Argentine, North American, Swedish, and Guatemalan institutions, directed by Michael F. Seldin of University of California[19], concluded that:

African Ancestors (CGFyL-UBA, 2005)

A research of Centro de Genética de Filosofía y Letras of the University of Buenos Aires established in 2005, after analyzed 500 blood samples in the Italian Hospital, Hospital of Clinics, and the Regional Medical Center of the city of La Plata, that 4.3% of the analyzed samples corresponding to inhabitants of greater Buenos Aires contains genetic African scoreboards (though it is not observed at the phenotypical level).[20]

Demographic data

Population: 40,301,927 (June 2007 est.)

Age structure:

Median age:

Annual population growth rate: 0.96% (2006 est.)

Birth rate: 16.73 births/1,000 population (2006 est.)

Death rate: 7.55 deaths/1,000 population (2006 est.)

Net migration rate: 0.4 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2006 est.)

Sex ratio:

Infant mortality rate:

Life expectancy at birth:

Total fertility rate: 2.16 children born/woman (2006 est.)

HIV/AIDS:

Ethnic groups:

Religions:[2]

Main article: Religion in Argentina

Languages:

Literacy (defined as individuals of age 15 and over who can read and write):

See also

References

  1. ^ Argentina
  2. ^ a b c d e f CIA - The World Factbook - Argentina
  3. ^ Dinámica migratoria: coyuntura y estructura en la Argentina de fines del XX
  4. ^ http://www.buenosaires.gov.ar/areas/hacienda/sis_estadistico/anu_estadistico/01/web01/c110.htm
  5. ^ INDEC: Encuesta Complementaria de Pueblos Indígenas (ECPI) 2004 - 2005 (in Spanish), INDEC. Document dated June 26, 2006; URL accessed on March 29, 2006.
  6. ^ Argentina Turismo, Información, Información general accessed: 2006-08-30.
  7. ^ Reversal Of Fortune - TIME
  8. ^ [1], Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas y Censos
  9. ^ Infobae:Clase Media Argentina Sumo en un Año 160.000 Familias
  10. ^ UNdata | record view | Literacy rates of 15-24 years old, men, percentage
  11. ^ Más porteños dejan todo para irse al campo a vivir de la tierra Clarin, 27-07-2005
  12. ^ a b Página/12, 27 December 2006. Los idiomas de los argentinos.
  13. ^ International Real State Digest
  14. ^ a b Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: Languages of Argentina, Retrieved on 2007-01-02.
  15. ^ WorldLanguage website. Retrieved on 2007-01-29
  16. ^ "Rápida recuperación económica tras la grave crisis"
  17. ^ Avena, Sergio A., Goicochea, Alicia S., Rey, Jorge et al. (2006). Mezcla génica en una muestra poblacional de la ciudad de Buenos Aires. Medicina (B. Aires), mar./abr. 2006, vol.66, no.2, p.113-118. ISSN 0025-7680.
  18. ^ [2]Estructura genética de la Argentina, Impacto de contribuciones genéticas - Ministerio de Educación de Ciencia y Tecnología de la Nación.
  19. ^ F. Seldin et al. (2006). "Argentine population genetic structure: Large variance in Amerindian contribution", American Journal of Physical Anthropology Volume 132, Issue 3, Pages 455 - 462 Published Online: 18 Dec 2006
  20. ^ Clarín (09-06-2006)
  21. ^ DEIS

Sources