Stats SA: South Africa’s now home to 57.73m people

south africa flag positive social media pixabay etereuti

South Africa’s population has grown by less than a million in 2018, this according to Statistics South Africa’s mid year population report.

Published today, and disseminated to users through Twitter in bite-sized chunks, Stats SA noted that the nation’s current population figure stands at an estimated 57.73-million. That’s up from 56.8-million last year.

Additionally, 51% of the country’s citizens are women.

More than 60% of South Africa’s citizens are between the ages of 15 and 59, with a massive spike noted between 21 and 37 years of age. Some 17-million people within the country are younger than 14-years-old, while just 8.5% are older than 59 years of age.

In terms of provincial population figures, Gauteng remains the most populous province, with 14.72-million inhabitants. KwaZulu-Natal (11.38-million), the Western Cape (6.62-million) and the Eastern Cape (6.52-million), follow.

Just 1.23-million people inhabit South Africa’s largest province, the Northern Cape.

The Western Cape and Gauteng have lower than national average fertility rates at 2.2 and 2.0 respectively. The Eastern Cape and Limpopo remain the highest at 2.9 — 0.5 above the national average.

Women overall live longer than men in South Africa, with a life expectancy of 67.3 years. Men are expected to live just over 61 years.

This also ties in with the dropping HIV infection rate with the youth.

HIV prevalence of youth between 15 and 24 years of age has fallen by 1.2% since 2012. It has however increased to 22.3% for women and 19% for men aged 15 to 49.

7.52-million South Africans currently live with HIV according to Stats SA.

The 1.2-million recorded births remain the biggest driver of population growth countrywide, outnumbering the 500 000 deaths recorded this year. With that said, the fertility rate has dropped by nearly 0.2 in the past decade.

Additionally, more people are immigrating to South Africa than leaving, with the net migration figure standing at 200 000 in 2018.

Read Stats SA’s full report here.

Feature image: Etereuti via Pixabay (CC0)

Andy Walker, former editor
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