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Algeria
POPULATION
Demographic Profile
Algeria's population in January 1990 was 25.1 million, of whom
12.4 million were female and almost 12.7 were male. The figure
compared with 12 million recorded in the 1966 census, 8.7 million
on the eve of the War of Independence in 1954, and 4 million at
the turn of the century. During the first twenty years after independence
in 1962, the population doubled. The United States government
estimate of Algeria's population in 1993 was 27.4 million, and
projections were that there would be 32.5 million people in the
country by the year 2000.
Various French censuses conducted during the colonial period
were inexact surveys relying on such techniques as counting tents
and multiplying by six to determine the number of nomads. The
surveys were enough, however, to paint a picture of a quickening
rate of population growth, the average annual rate of increase
rising from 0.5 percent between 1900 and 1910 to 2.7 percent between
1950 and 1955. During the period of hostilities that extended
from 1954 to 1962, the population grew at a greatly reduced rate
because of the number of people killed in the war. The exact number
of deaths is not known; French officials estimated it at 350,000,
but Algerians placed it at 1.5 million.
Population growth resumed at the end of hostilities, and in 1966
the annual growth rate was estimated at 3.3 percent. Subsequently,
the rate rose to 3.4 percent before subsiding to 3.2 percent in
the late 1970s, 3.1 in the early 1980s, and 2.8 percent for the
1990s, according to World Bank projections.
The crude birth rate per 1,000 inhabitants fell in 1989 to 34.3
from 45 in 1985, 48.8 for the 1970 to 1975 period, and 50.4 for
the 1960 to 1965 period, as estimated by the Population Division
of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United
Nations (UN) and by the World Bank. Under progressively improving
conditions of health and sanitation, the crude death rate declined
from twenty-four deaths per 1,000 in the period from 1950 to 1955
to eighteen per 1,000 in 1965, three years after independence.
By 1990 it had fallen to eight per 1,000. Life expectancy at birth
rose from forty-two years for males and forty-four for females
in the 1950 to 1955 period, to forty-nine years for males and
fifty-one years for females in 1965, to sixty-five years for males
and sixty-six for females in 1990, a marked improvement reflecting
the major transformations in the health sector.
From the mid-1960s to the mid-1970s, the average Algerian woman
produced seven to eight children. The figure rose to slightly
more than nine for women who married before the age of eighteen,
but fell to nearly seven in the case of females who married after
the age of twenty-one. The birth rate was only slightly lower
in urban than in rural areas. In 1990 it was estimated that the
total fertility rate had fallen to 5.1 children per woman, a considerable
decline.
The 1966 census showed that the population was very young; some
48.2 percent of Algerians were under the age of fifteen. The 1977
census confirmed this pattern, although the age-group under fifteen
declined slightly to 47.9 percent of the population. By 1990,
only 40.6 percent of the population (10.6 million Algerians) were
under the age of fifteen. The proportion of the population under
nineteen also showed signs of decline. In the mid-1980s, official
sources reported that about 57 percent of the population was under
age nineteen, but by 1990 that age-group constituted just over
one-half the population, or 51.2 percent, a drop of almost 6 percentage
points in five years.
In terms of age structure, detailed data showed that in 1990
males were slightly more numerous than females at birth and through
the forty- to forty-four age-group. Thereafter, women predominated
in all age categories because of the somewhat higher death rates
for men than for women in the higher age-groups (see
fig. 5).
Data as of December 1993
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