Denmark - Demographics

Demographics

According to 2012 figures from Statistics Denmark, 89.6% of Denmark's population of over 5,580,516 was of Danish descent. Many of the remaining 10.4% were immigrants—or descendants of recent immigrants—from neighbour countries, Turkey, Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, South Asia and the Middle East. Of the 10.4%, approximately 200,000 (34%) are of a Western background, and approx. 390,000 (66%) have a non-Western background.

The median age is 39.8 years, with 0.98 males per female. 98.2% of the population (age 15 and up) is literate. The birth rate is 1.74 children born per woman (2006 est.). Despite the low birth rate, the population is still growing at an average annual rate of 0.33%. An international study conducted by Adrian White at Leicester University in 2006 showed that the population of Denmark had the highest life satisfaction in the world.

Danish, Faroese, and Greenlandic are the official languages of mainland Denmark, the Faroes, and Greenland, respectively; German is an official minority language in the former South Jutland County near the German border. Danish is spoken throughout the kingdom and is the national language of Denmark. English and German are the most widely spoken foreign languages.

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