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Venezuela | Politics edit

The Demographics of Venezuela are the condition and overview of Venezuela's peoples. Demographic topics include basic education, health, and population statistics as well as identified racial and religious affiliations.

Venezuela's cultural imprint indicates an amount of Caribbean Spanish, West Indian and "Old world" (colonial European) influences, but Venezuela isn't always classified as an "Euro-Latin American" society like Argentina, Uruguay and to a smaller extent, Chile. The South American nation shares the multiplicity of regional cultures like Mexico and Brazil.

Venezuela was once a province of the New Granada confederation, included Colombia with Panama (independent since 1903), and Ecuador included what is now northernmost Peru in the early 1800s, and Venezuelans share many cultural traits with former members of New Granada after each one seceded into independent countries.

Venezuela's peoples are descended primarily from forebearers of Venezuelan indigenous, African, and Spanish European heritage. Incumbent president Hugo Chávez claims Caucasian, African and Amerindian background, a mixed-race family history is common for many Venezuelans.

The Venezuelan people comprise a combination of heritages. The historically present Amerindians, Spanish colonists and imported African slaves were joined by sponsored European groups and others from neighbouring countries in South America during waves of immigration in the 20th century. The multi-racial/ethnic combination is evident in Venezuelan culture (in food, music, clothing, holidays and the mestizaje identity).

A recent study in 2005 on Venezuela's racial groups showed that 60% of the population are Mestizo (mixed race between white, African and Indian), 29% white (mostly Spaniards, Italians, Germans and Portuguese), 8% African, 1% Amerindian and 2% Asian (China, Japan, Vietnam, Korea, and the Middle East). There are Venezuelans whose ancestors came from the United States when 10,000 expatriates arrived after the American Civil War (1865).^{[citation needed]}

Unlike Colombia, where the majority of Caucasians originate from only Spanish ancestors, Euro-Venezuelans in small but influential numbers descended from many European countries such as Germany, Portugal, Italy, France, Ireland, Great Britain, Austria and Eastern European countries such as Hungary, Poland, Russia and Romania.^{[citation needed]}

There are also various recently formed communities from Europe such as Czech Republic, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, Bulgaria, Croatia and Greece.^{[citation needed]} Although Spanish is the official language, there are spoken numerous indigenous languages in the country's rainforests and interior areas.

About 85% of the population live in urban areas in the northern portion of the country and currently resides in the urban conglomerations (Caracas, Valencia, Maracaibo, et cetera) that are concentrated in Venezuela's northern coastal mountain strip. Nearly half of Venezuela's geographic area lies south of the Orinoco River; however, this region contains only 5% of the Venezuelan population.

Population data on Venezuela (Year plotted vs. total population (in thousands)). Chart shows the total population between 1961 and 2005; the steady upwards trend is particularly notable. Data is from 2005 FAO reports.

The July 2005 CIA estimate puts Venezuela's total population at 25,375,281 inhabitants. It should be noted that many Venezuelan government officials, statisticians, and activists consider this a gross underestimate. Notably, the 2005 INE estimate is 26,577,423 inhabitants. Additionally, over the past five years, Venezuelan society's general age structure has been trending towards the homologous structure found in Cuba, Western Europe, Japan, and other healthy and rapidly aging societies. Notably, there has been a significant increase in the proportion and gross numbers of elderly Venezuelans (aged 65 and up), as well as a corresponding drop in the total fertility rate.

• According to the Venezuelan National Institute of Statistics, It has a population of 27,250,414 inhabitants by 2006.

• 1.38% (2007 estimate).

• 18.71 births per 1,000 population (2006 estimate).
• 4.92 deaths per 1,000 population (2006 estimate).

• 2.23 children born per woman (2006 estimate).

• 21.54 deaths per 1,000 live births (2006 estimate).

Net emigration rate is zero (2006 estimate) according to the CIA world fact book.

The accepted formal and demographic definition of the literacy rate is that proportion or percentage of the Venezuelan population older than age 15 that can both read and write. The below are 2006 estimates from the INE.

According to the 2005 CIA World Factbook, Venezuela's main ethnic affiliations are Spanish, followed by Italian, Portuguese, Arab (esp. Lebanese and Syrian), German, French, African, indigenous people, and smaller communities of Chinese, Japanese, east Indian, Eastern European and Anglo-American descent. Venezuelans of Filipino descent number around 500,000.^[1].

The overwhelming majority of Venezuelans denote themselves as adherents of Catholicism; this is true nominally if not in practice.

Others include Islam, Judaism and Orthodox Christianity.

• Culture of Venezuela
• Heritage of Venezuela
• Human Development Index

• This article contains material from the CIA World Factbook which, as a U.S. government publication, is in the public domain. [1] (2005)
• Acosta, Maruja. "Urbanizacion y clases sociales en Venezuela." Revista Interamericana de Planificacion Bogota , 7, No. 26, June 1973, 22-44.

• The article contains a statistical reference from the Wikipedia public domain [2](2006).