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Georgia Population and Ethnic Composition
Over many centuries, Georgia gained a reputation for
tolerance of minority religions and ethnic groups from elsewhere,
but the postcommunist era was a time of sharp conflict among
groups long considered part of the national fabric. Modern
Georgia is populated by several ethnic groups, but by far the
most numerous of them is the Georgians. In the early 1990s, the
population was increasing slowly, and armed hostilities were
causing large-scale emigration from certain regions. The ethnic
background of some groups, such as the Abkhaz, was a matter of
sharp dispute.
Population Characteristics
According to the Soviet Union's 1989 census, the total
population of Georgia was 5.3 million. The estimated population
in 1993 was 5.6 million. Between 1979 and 1989, the population
grew by 8.5 percent, with growth rates of 16.7 percent among the
urban population and 0.3 percent in rural areas. In 1993 the
overall growth rate was 0.8 percent. About 55.8 percent of the
population was classified as urban; Tbilisi, the capital and
largest city, had more than 1.2 million inhabitants, or
approximately 23 percent of the national total. The capital's
population grew by 18.1 percent between 1979 and 1989, mainly
because of migration from rural areas. Kutaisi, the second
largest city, had a population of about 235,000.
In 1991 Georgia's birth rate was seventeen per 1,000
population, its death rate nine per 1,000. Life expectancy was
seventy-five years for females and sixty-seven years for males.
In 1990 the infant mortality rate was 196 per 10,000 live births.
Average family size in 1989 was 4.1, with larger families
predominantly located in rural areas. In the 1980s and early
1990s, the Georgian population was aging slowly; the cohort under
age nineteen shrank slightly and the cohort over sixty increased
slightly as percentages of the entire population during that
period. The Georgian and Abkhazian populations were the subjects
of substantial international study by anthropologists and
gerontologists because of the relatively high number of
centenarians among them.
Data as of March 1994
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