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Caribbean Islands Population
The total estimated population of the Cayman Islands in 1985
was 20,000, growing at an annual rate of 3.5 percent. Ninety
percent of the population lived on Grand Cayman; most of the
remainder lived on Cayman Brac. Little Cayman had very few
inhabitants, but the construction of tourist facilities there was
increasingly attracting workers and other residents. Immigrant
workers comprised about a third of the total population on the
islands and held 20 percent of the jobs.
The population density per square kilometer in 1985 was
moderate at 75.8. In 1984 the average life expectancy at birth
stood at seventy years. In 1984 the birth rate was moderately high
by world standards at 21.4 per 1,000; infant mortality stood at 5.9
per 1,000 births. Twenty-nine percent of the population was under
the age of fifteen. The people of the Cayman Islands had varying
ethnic backgrounds: 25 percent were black; 20 percent, white; and
55 percent, mulatto.
The Turks and Caicos had a 1985 population of approximately
8,600, growing at an annual rate of 3.3 percent. The population
continued to fluctuate, however, because of a high birth rate and
the constant movement of young men in search of work between the
Turks and Caicos and the Bahamas. Blacks made up 90 percent of the
total; the remainder were mulatto or white.
Although the Turks and Caicos were still relatively undeveloped
in the mid-1980s, some illegal immigrant workers, mostly Haitians
and Dominicans, arrived in the islands to perform low-wage hotel
jobs spurned by local citizens. Although their labor contributed to
the tourism industry, in 1985 the illegals became such a burden on
the islands' already-overstretched funds for health and welfare
that the government made its first forced deportation of Haitians.
Population density in the Turks and Caicos Islands remained
very low, at sixteen persons per square kilometer. In 1982 the
birth rate was a moderately high 25.5 per 1,000; infant mortality
stood at 24 per 1,000 births. In 1985 the average life expectancy
at birth was 70.2 years.
The people of both territories were predominantly Protestant.
In the mid-1980s, 35 percent of the Caymanians were Presbyterian;
25 percent belonged to the Church of God; and 40 percent belonged
to other Christian churches. Approximately 42 percent of the
citizens of the Turks and Caicos Islands were Baptist; 19 percent,
Methodist; 17 percent, Anglican; and 22 percent, members of other
Christian churches.
Data as of November 1987
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