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Venezuela Population Profile
Sixth in size among the Latin American countries,
Venezuela
was one of the Western Hemisphere's least densely
populated
countries. But despite a low overall population density
(21.4
persons per square kilometer in 1987), distribution was
extremely
uneven (see
table 2;
table 3, Appendix). Most of its
nearly 20
million inhabitants (19,698,104, according to a mid-1990
estimate) were concentrated in the western Andean region
and
along the coast. Although nearly half of the land area
lies south
and east of the Río Orinoco, that area contained only
about 4
percent of the population in the late 1980s. About 75
percent of
the total population lived in only 20 percent of the
national
territory, mainly in the northern mountains (Caracas and
surrounding areas) and the Maracaibo lowlands. In the
1990s, the
north, the site of most of the country's first colonial
cities,
agricultural estates, and urban settlements, remained the
administrative, economic, and social heartland of the
country.
Most of the population was concentrated along the coast
and in
the valleys of the coastal mountain ranges, and about one
of
every five Venezuelans lived in Caracas. Only three major
inland
urban centers existed in the early 1990s: Barquisimeto,
Ciudad
Guayana, and Valencia. This concentration of population
persisted
in spite of a number of government programs that provided
incentives to relocate industry and tried to expand
educational
opportunities throughout the rest of the country.
Venezuela's population growth rate (2.5 percent in
1990)
remained among the highest in the world, fed by both a
high birth
rate (28 births per 1,000 population in 1990) and a
comparatively
low death rate (4 deaths per 1,000 population in
1990)--mainly a
result of improved health and sanitary conditions after
World War
II. The average annual population increase for the period
1950-86
was 3.4 percent. Only in the 1970s and 1980s did it begin
to
decline somewhat, dropping to 2.7 percent by 1986 and to
2.5
percent by 1990. This trend was all the more surprising in
light
of the widespread availability of contraceptives and
Venezuelans'
comparatively high education level and standard of living,
social
indicators that normally correlate with much lower rates
of
natural increase.
On average, postwar Venezuela roughly doubled its
population
every twenty years. The prevailing demographic patterns
indicated
that the population would more than double during the
period
1990-2010. The number of births per woman, however, had
begun to
decline by 1990 (to 3.4), and this eventually should be
reflected
in lower growth figures. But any substantial reduction in
the
overall growth rate was not expected until sometime in the
twenty-first century.
Although population figures based on census data were
quite
accurate for the decades after World War II, the same
could not
be said for the figures on mortality, particularly the
figures
generated at the state level. Deaths were undercounted,
particularly those of infants and young children. Thus,
one could
not reliably compare mortality rates among individual
states
because a higher mortality rate in one state might not, in
fact,
reflect greater mortality, but simply better record
keeping.
Nationally, the infant mortality rate in 1990 was 27
deaths per
1,000 live births, and life expectancy was seventy-one
years for
males and seventy-seven years for females. Both of these
figures
ranked among the best in Latin America
(see Health and Social Security
, this ch.).
In the mid-1980s, about 40 percent of the population
was
under fifteen years of age; about 70 percent was under
thirty
(see
fig. 3). The last major influx of European immigrants
took
place in the early 1950s, when large numbers of Spanish,
Italian,
and Portuguese immigrants arrived, attracted by massive
government construction projects. The 1981 census showed
that 94
percent of the people were native born. Of the foreign
born, most
came from Spain, Italy, Portugal, Africa, and Colombia. As
of
1986, about 17,000 United States citizens also were living
in
Venezuela.
Data as of December 1990
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