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Libya
POPULATION
As of 1987, the most recent census was that taken in July 1984,
but the only available data showed a provisional population figure
of 3.637 million inhabitants--one of the smallest totals on the
African continent. Of these, an estimated 1.950 million were men,
and 1.687 million women. Having slightly more men than women in
the population was characteristic of developing countries such
as Libya where health practices and sanitation were fast improving
but where female mortality relating to childbirth and favoritism
toward male over female children caused a slight skewing of the
population profile. In addition, underreporting of females is
fairly common in many Muslim societies.
The 1984 population total was an increase from the 2.29 million
reported in 1973 and 1.54 million in 1964. Included in the census
were at least 260,000 expatriate workers, but the total number
of foreigners in Libya in 1984 was unavailable. This uncertainty
was in keeping with a general lack of reliable, current, social
statistics for Libya in the 1980s, in marked contrast with the
situation a decade earlier.
The population was exceptionally young and was growing at a rapid
pace. Estimates placed those under the age of fifteen at up to
half the total population. Based on results of the 1984 census,
the United Nations (UN) placed the annual rate of increase for
the 1980-84 period at an extremely high 4.5 percent, but the Central
Bank of Libya placed the figure at 3.9 percent annually for nationals
only. Official sources put the average annual growth rate for
the 1970-86 period at 4 percent, a figure that agreed with World
Bank (see Glossary) data; the bank projected that this rate would
prevail until the year 2000, when Libya's population would total
6 million.
This high rate of population increase reflected an official policy
of fostering rapid growth to meet labor needs and to fuel economic
development. It was also well above comparable rates in other
Maghribi states, which had instituted family planning programs
to contain their burgeoning numbers. Libya had no such national
program. On the contrary, the government offered incentives to
encourage births and had improved health facilities to ensure
infant survivability. Libyan population policy thus emphasized
growth over restraint, large families over small ones, and an
ever-expanding population--luxuries Libya felt it could afford,
given the vastness of its wealth in petroleum and area.
According to UN estimates for the years 1980-85, life expectancy
was fifty-six years for men and fifty-nine years for women, a
gain of more than ten years for each sex since 1960. The crude
birth rate was 46 per 1,000, down 7 percent since 1965, while
the crude death rate was 11 per 1,000, a decline of 40 percent
over 20 years. The infant mortality rate had similarly declined
from 140 deaths per 1,000 in 1965 to 92 in 1985, still high by
Western standards but not by those of North Africa.
The population was by no means distributed evenly across the
country. About 65 percent resided in Tripolitania, 30 percent
in Cyrenaica, and 5 percent in Fezzan, a breakdown that had not
changed appreciably for at least 30 years. Within the two northern
geographic regions, the population was overwhelmingly concentrated
along the Mediterranean littoral. Along the coast, the density
was estimated at more than fifty inhabitants per square kilometer,
whereas it fell to less than one per square kilometer in the interior.
The average for the country as a whole was usually placed at two.
In the 1980s, Libya was still predominantly a rural country,
even though a large percentage of its people were concentrated
in the cities and nearby intensively cultivated agricultural zones
of the coastal plains. Under the impact of heavy and sustained
country-to-town migration, the urban sector continued to grow
rapidly, averaging 8 percent annually in the early 1980s. Reliable
assessments held the country to be about 40 percent urban as compared
with a 1964 figure of 27 percent. Some sources, such as the World
Bank, placed the rate of urbanization at more than 60 percent,
but this figure was probably based on 1973 census data that reflected
a radical change in the definition of urban population rather
than an unprecedented surge of rural inhabitants into cities and
towns. In spite of sizable internal migration into urban centers,
particularly Benghazi and Tripoli, Libya remained less urbanized
than almost any other Arab country. The government was concerned
about this continual drain from the countryside. Since the late
1970s, it had sponsored a number of farming schemes in the desert,
designed in part to encourage rural families to remain on the
land rather than to migrate to more densely populated areas.
In the early 1980s, the urban concentrations of Tripoli and Benghazi
dominated the country. These two cities and the neighboring coastal
regions contained more than 90 percent of Libya's population and
nearly all of its urban centers, but they occupied less than 10
percent of the land area. Several factors accounted for their
dominance, such as higher rates of fertility, declining death
rates because of improved health and sanitation measures, and
long-term internal migration.
As the capital of the country, Tripoli was the larger and more
important of the two cities. Greater Tripoli was composed of six
municipalities that stretched nearly 100 kilometers along the
coast and about 50 inland. At the heart of this urban complex
was the city of Tripoli, the 1984 population of which was 990,000
and which contained several distinct zones. The medina (see Glossary)
was the oldest quarter, many of its buildings dating to the Ottoman
era (see Ottoman Regency , ch. 1). Here a traditionally structured
Islamic society composed of artisans, religious scholars and leaders,
shopkeepers, and merchants had survived into the mid- twentieth
century. The manufacture of traditional handicrafts, such as carpets,
leather goods, copper ware, and pottery, was centered in the medina.
The Italian city, constructed between 1911 and 1951 beyond the
medina, was designed for commercial and administrative purposes.
It featured wide avenues, piazzas, multistoried buildings, parks,
and residential areas where Italian colonials once lived. The
Libyan- built modern sector reflected the needs of government,
the impact of large-scale internal migration, new industrialization,
and oil income. Independence brought rapid rural-to-urban migration
as a result of employment opportunities in construction, transportation,
and municipal services, especially after the discovery of oil.
This period also brought new government facilities, apartment
buildings, and the first public housing projects as well as such
industries as food-processing, textiles, and oil refining.
Metropolitan Tripoli sprawled in an arc around the harbor and
medina. In addition to its political, commercial, and residential
structures and functions, the city was a seat of learning and
scholarship centered in religious seminaries, technical colleges,
and a university (see Education , this ch.). Planners hoped to
channel future growth east and west along the coast and to promote
expansion of surrounding towns in an effort to reduce urban density
and to preserve contiguous agricultural zones. They also envisaged
revitalization of the medina as they strove to preserve the city's
architectural and cultural heritage in the midst of twentieth-
century urbanization.
As a consequence of its small population and work force, Libya
has had to import a large number of foreign workers. Expatriate
workers, most of them from nearby Arab countries, flowed into
Libya after the discovery of oil. There were about 17,000 of them
in 1964, but the total had risen to 64,000 by 1971 and to 223,000
in 1975, when foreign workers made up almost 33 percent of the
labor force. The official number of foreign workers in Libya in
1980 was 280,000, but private researchers argued persuasively
that the true number was more than 500,000 because of underreporting
and illegal entry.
The most acute demand was for managerial and professional personnel.
A large percentage of the expatriates were unskilled laborers,
who were widely distributed throughout the economy. On paper,
there was ample legislation to ensure that foreigners were given
employment only where qualified Libyans could not be found. But
the demand for labor of all kinds was such that the availability
of aliens made it possible for Libyans to select the choice positions
for themselves and leave the less desirable ones to foreigners.
In 1980 nonnationals were found mainly in construction work,
where they numbered almost 130,000 or 46 percent of those employed
in that industry, according to official statistics. Their numbers
in such work were expected to decline after the mid-1980s, at
the same time that ever-larger numbers of foreigners were expected
to fill jobs in manufacturing, where they constituted more than
8 percent of the 1980 labor force. Significant numbers of expatriates
were found in agriculture (8 percent) and education (l0 percent)
as well. Few were employed in the petroleum sector, however, only
3,000 or 1 percent of all foreign workers in 1980.
In 1983 there were more than 560,000 foreigners resident in Libya,
about 18 percent of the total population, according to the Secretariat
of Planning. By far the most numerous were Egyptians (l74,000)
and Tunisians (73,600); the largest Western groups were Italians
(l4,900) and British (10,700). During 1984, however, a large portion
of the foreign work force departed as a result of restrictions
on repatriation of earnings. In 1985, for reasons that appeared
more political than economic, Libya expelled tens of thousands
of workers, including 20,000 Egyptians, 32,000 Tunisians, and
several thousand from Mali and Niger. This exodus continued the
following year when some 25,000 Moroccans were forced to depart.
The number of resident foreigners thus declined drastically in
the mid-l980s. The exact dimensions of the decline as well as
its impact upon the country, however, remained unclear. Minimum
estimates of the number of nonnationals still in Libya in l987
ranged upward of 200,000, a reasonable figure given Libya's dependence
upon imported labor for essential skills and services.
Data as of 1987
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