Recruitment Portugal

POPULATION IN PORTUGAL

In 1801 it was estimated that 3.1 million people lived in Portugal. This figure had tripled by the early 1990s to just over ten million. This slow growth can be attributed mainly to a high infant mortality rate and a high emigration rate that meant the country's population actually fell during the 1960s.

The first sizeable increase occurred in 1981 when it reached nearly 9.8 million which was caused by approximately 800,000 refugees from the country's African colonies settling there. By the beginning of 1992 the figure was nearly 10.5 million with specialists predicting that if the existing trends continued it would pea at 10.8 million in 2010 and fall to 10.5 in 2025.

The population was not evenly distributed with the mountainous regions typically containing fewer people than the flat coastal towns. Government estimates also showed that in the late 1980s women outnumbered men by an unusually high margin and that the number of older people was also high. Portugal has long had an aging population with the percentage under the age of thirty decreasing since 1900 and more young males than ever leaving the country. Between 1960 and 1990 the percentage of those under 15 fell from 29% to 20.9% while people aged 65 and over rose from 8.1% to 13.1%. In areas where employment is available this problem was not the case with Lisbon and growth areas of Santarem and Setubal having the lion's share of Portuguese of working age between 20 and 65.