Demographics of Sweden

The birth and death rates in Sweden 1950–2008.

Population pyramid in 2019

Population density in the counties of Sweden.
people/km²

  0–9.9

  10–24.9

  25–49.9

  50–99.9

  100–199.9

  200+

Demographic statistics according to the World Population Review.[5]

• One birth every 4 minutes
• One death every 6 minutes
• Net gain of one person every 8 minutes
• One net migrant every 14 minutes

Demographic statistics according to the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.[6]

Population

10,202,491 (July 2020 est.)

Age structure

0-14 years: 17.54% (male 904,957 /female 855,946)

15-24 years: 11.06% (male 573,595 /female 537,358)

25-54 years: 39.37% (male 2,005,422 /female 1,947,245)

55-64 years: 11.67% (male 588,314 /female 583,002)

65 years and over: 20.37% (male 946,170 /female 1,098,986) (2018 est.)

0-14 years: 17.43% (male 892,462/female 843,375)

15-24 years: 11.31% (male 581,025/female 545,971)

25-54 years: 39.42% (male 1,993,590/female 1,933,080)

55-64 years: 11.58% (male 578,942/female 574,479)

65 years and over: 20.26% (male 931,593/female 1,085,970) (2017 est.)

Median age

total: 41.1 years. Country comparison to the world: 45th

male: 40.1 years

female: 42.2 years (2018 est.)

total: 41.2 years

male: 40.2 years

female: 42.2 years (2017 est.)

Birth rate

12.1 births/1,000 population (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 164th

11.78 births/1,000 population (2013 est.)

Death rate

9.4 deaths/1,000 population (2017 est.) Country comparison to the world: 52nd

9.37 deaths/1,000 population (2013 est.)

Total fertility rate

1.87 children born/woman (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 141st

Net migration rate

5.3 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2017 est.) Country comparison to the world: 23rd

6.75 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2013 est.)

Population growth rate

0.8% (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 129th

0.81% (2017 est.)

0.93% (2013 est.)

Mother's mean age at first birth

29.1 years (2015 est.)

Life expectancy at birth

total population: 82.1 years Country comparison to the world: 16th

male: 80.2 years

female: 84.2 years (2017 est.)

Net birth surplus rate

2.40 births/1,000 population (2013 est.)

Infant mortality rate

total: 2.6 deaths/1,000 live births Country comparison to the world: 218th

male: 2.9 deaths/1,000 live births

female: 2.3 deaths/1,000 live births (2017 est.)

2.75 deaths/1,000 live births (2010 est.)

Dependency ratios

total dependency ratio: 58.5

youth dependency ratio: 27.4

elderly dependency ratio: 31.1

potential support ratio: 3.2 (2015 est.)

Unemployment, youth ages 15–24

total: 17.9%. Country comparison to the world: 72nd

male: 18.8%

female: 17% (2017 est.)

School life expectancy (primary to tertiary education)

total: 19 years

male: 18 years

female: 20 years (2016)

Urbanisation

88% of total population (2020 est.)

Rate of urbanisation: 1.05% annual rate of change (2015–20 est.)

Population projections

Born in 1953, a report on the longitudinal study Project Metropolitan

In 1950 Sweden had fewer people aged 10–20 with more people ages 20–30 and 0–10. In 2017 the ratio of male to female remains steady at about 50–50. As a whole, the graph broadens with people appearing to live longer. In 2050 it is predicted that all ages will increase from below 300,000 males and females to above 300,000 males and females. With about 50,000 people living to the ages of 90–100. In 2100 the graph is shaped as a rectangle with people of all ages and genders remaining steady. It narrows slightly at the top of the graph with about 250,000/300,000 males and females living to be 90–100 years old.[11] Statistics Sweden projects the following population development in Sweden:[12]

Year	Projection
2016	9,995,000
2020	10,431,000
2026	11,046,000
2030	11,344,000
2040	11,898,000
2050	12,395,000
2060	12,858,000

Eurostat projects a population in Sweden reaching 11,994,364 people in 2040 and 14,388,478 in 2080.[13]

The population density is just over 25 people per km² (65 per square mile), with 1 437 persons per km² in localities (continuous settlement with at least 200 inhabitants).[14]^,[15] 87% of the population live in urban areas, which cover 1.5% of the entire land area.[16] 63% of Swedes are in large urban areas.[16] The population density is substantially higher in the south than in the north. The capital city Stockholm has a municipal population of about 950,000 (with 1.5 million in the urban area and 2.3 million in the metropolitan area). The second- and third-largest cities are Gothenburg and Malmö. Greater Gothenburg counts just over a million inhabitants and the same goes for the western part of Scania, along the Öresund. The Öresund Region, the Danish-Swedish cross-border region around the Öresund that Malmö is part of, has a population of 4 million. Outside of major cities, areas with notably higher population density include the agricultural part of Östergötland, the western coast, the area around Lake Mälaren and the agricultural area around Uppsala.

Norrland, which covers approximately 60% of the Swedish territory, has a very low population density (below 5 people per square kilometer). The mountains and most of the remote coastal areas are almost unpopulated. Low population density exists also in large parts of western Svealand, as well as southern and central Småland. An area known as Finnveden, which is located in the south-west of Småland, and mainly below the 57th parallel, can also be considered as almost empty of people.

The majority of the population are ethnic Swedes, or people who can trace most of their ethnicity to Sweden going back at least 12 generations. The Sweden Finns are a large ethnic minority comprising approximately 50,000 along the Swedish-Finnish border, and 450,000 first and second-generation immigrated ethnic Finns, mainly living in the Mälaren Valley region. Meänkieli Finnish has official status in parts of northern Sweden near the Finnish border. In addition, Sweden's indigenous population groups include the Sami people, who have a history of practicing hunting and gathering and gradually adopting a largely semi-nomadic reindeer herding lifestyle. They have been present in Fenno-Scandinavia from at earliest 5000 years [17] to at latest around 2650 years.[18] Today, the Sami language holds the status of official minority language in the Norrbotten, Västerbotten and Jämtland counties.

In addition to the Sami, Tornedalers, and Sweden Finns, Jewish and Roma people have national minority status in Sweden.[19]

There are no official statistics on ethnicity, but according to Statistics Sweden, around two million (19.6%) inhabitants in Sweden are born in another country. Of those, more than half are Swedish citizens. [20] The most common countries of origin were Syria (1.82%), Finland (1.45%), Iraq (1.41%), Poland (0.91%), Iran (0.76%) and Somalia (0.67%).[21] The average age in Sweden is 41.1 years.[22]

The total fertility rate is the number of children born per woman. It is based on fairly good data for the entire period. Sources: Our World In Data and Gapminder Foundation.[23]

Estimated birth rate (blue) and death rate in Sweden for the period of 1735 to 2000. The graph indicates strong population growth for the period of 1800 to 1970, and a beginning population decline from the 1980s.

A Swedish family with their five children in 1898

Data according to Statistics Sweden, which collects the official statistics for Sweden.[24]

Sources: Our World In Data and the United Nations.

Prior to World War II, emigrants generally outnumbered immigrants. Since then, net migration has been positive with many immigrants coming to Sweden from the 1970s through today.

Immigration

Main article: Immigration to Sweden

Increases (1984–2014) of asylum in Sweden by origin

  Serbia and Montenegro: 118 669

  Iraq: 98 211

  Syria: 65 616

  Bosnia-Herzegovina: 58 166

  Somalia: 55 123

  Iran: 50 571

  Other countries: 134 479

  Unknown: 43 350

Data source (Swedish government).

The demographic profile of Sweden has altered considerably due to immigration patterns since the 1970s. As of 2017, Statistics Sweden reported that around 2,439,007 or 24.1% of the inhabitants of Sweden were from a foreign background: that is, each such person either had been born abroad or had been born in Sweden to two parents who themselves had both been born abroad.[30] Also taking into account people with only one parent born abroad, this number increases to almost a third in 2017.[31]

Additionally, the birth rate among immigrant women after arriving in Sweden is somewhat higher than among ethnic Swedes.[32] Taking into account the fact that immigrant women have on average fewer children than Swedish women of comparable age, however, the difference in total birth rate is only 0.1 children more if the woman is foreign born – with the disclaimer that some women may have children not immigrating to and not reported in Sweden, who are thus not included in the statistics.[33]

Contemporary immigration

Since the early 1970s, immigration to Sweden has been mostly due to refugee migration and family reunification from countries in the Middle East and Latin America.[35] According to Eurostat, in 2010, there were 1.33 million foreign-born residents in Sweden, corresponding to 14.3% of the total population. Of these, 859,000 (64.3%) were born outside the EU and 477,000 (35.7%) were born in another EU Member State.[36][37] By comparison, the Swedish civil registry reports, for 2018, that nearly 1.96 million residents are foreign-born, a 47% increase from 2010. There are 8.27 million Swedish-born residents, giving a total population of 10.23 million, and a 19.1% foreign-born population.[38]

The first group of Assyrians/Syriacs moved to Sweden from Lebanon in 1967. Many of them live in Södertälje (Stockholm).[39][40] There are also around 40,000 Roma in Sweden.[41] Some Roma people have long historical roots in Sweden, while others are more recent migrants from elsewhere in Europe.

Immigrants from Western Asia have been a rapidly growing share of Sweden's population. According to the government agency Statistics Sweden, the number of immigrants born in all of Asia (including the Middle East) rose from just 1,000 in 1950 to 295,000 in 2003.[42] Most of those immigrants came from Iraq, Iran, Lebanon and Syria, according to Statistics Sweden.[42]

Immigration of Iraqis increased dramatically during the Iraq War, beginning in 2003. A total of 8,951 Iraqis came to Sweden in 2006, accounting for 45% of the entire Iraqi migration to Europe. By 2007, the community of Iraqis in Sweden numbered above 70,000. In 2008, Sweden introduced tighter rules on asylum seekers.[43]

A significant number of Syrian Christians have also settled in Sweden. There have also been immigrants from South-Central Asia such as Afghanistan and Pakistan. Since the European migrant crisis, Syrians became the second-largest group of foreign-born persons in the Swedish civil registry in 2017 with 158,443 people (after former Yugoslavia).

Note that the table below lists the citizenship the person had when arriving in Sweden, and therefore there are no registered Eritreans, Russians or Bosnians from 1990, they were recorded as Ethiopians, Soviets and Yugoslavs. The nationality of Yugoslavs below is therefore people who came to Sweden from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia before 1991 and people who came from today's Montenegro and Serbia before 2003, then called the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Counting all people who came from Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Kosovo, Macedonia, Serbia and Montenegro, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, there were 176,033 people from there in 2018.

42 countries with over 10,000 foreign-born persons.[44]

Country	1900	1930	1960	1990	2000	2010	2018	2019
Syria	−	−	6	5,874	14,162	20,758	185,991	191,530
Iraq	−	−	16	9,818	49,372	121,761	144,035	146,048
Finland	6,644	9,746	101,307	217,636	195,447	169,521	147,883	144,561
Poland	−	1,065	6,347	35,631	40,123	70,253	92,759	93,722
Iran	2	8	115	40,084	51,101	62,120	77,386	80,136
Somalia	−	−	−	1,441	13,082	37,846	68,678	70,173
former Yugoslavia	−	19	1,532	43,346	71,972	70,819	65,124	64,349
Bosnia and Herzegovina	−	−	−	−	51,526	56,183	59,395	60,012
Afghanistan	−	−	17	534	4,287	14,420	51,979	58,780
Turkey	15	22	202	25,528	31,894	42,527	49,948	51,689
Germany	5,107	8,566	37,580	37,558	38,155	48,158	51,140	51,436
Eritrea	−	−	−	−	3,054	10,301	42,300	45,734
Thailand	−	−	20	4,934	10,353	31,378	42,394	43,556
Norway	7,978	14,731	37,253	52,744	42,464	43,480	41,747	41,578
India	45	135	361	9,054	11,110	17,863	35,288	40,641
Denmark	6,872	8,726	35,112	43,931	38,190	45,548	40,011	39,457
China (not including Hong Kong)	34	201	520	3,896	8,150	23,998	33,288	35,282
Romania	3	34	719	8,785	11,776	19,741	31,040	32,294
United Kingdom	779	1,270	2,738	11,378	14,602	20,839	28,976	29,979
Lebanon	−	−	15	15,986	20,038	24,116	28,119	28,508
Chile	6	28	69	27,635	26,842	28,387	27,995	28,025
United States	5,130	8,852	10,874	13,001	14,413	17,179	21,943	22,802
Russia	1,506	−	−	−	6,523	15,511	21,615	22,265
Ethiopia	5	−	59	10,027	11,907	13,822	20,695	21,686
Vietnam	−	−	1	6,265	10,898	14,584	19,741	20,676
Greece	5	22	266	13,171	10,851	11,381	18,917	19,547
Pakistan	−	−	11	2,291	3,100	10,265	16,185	19,107
Hungary	50	108	8,544	15,045	14,127	15,339	16,799	16,728
Lithuania	−	149	−	233	785	6,735	14,732	15,596
Philippines	−	−	5	2,613	5,460	9,826	14,509	15,281
Serbia	−	−	−	−	−	5,324	13,856	15,022
Italy	−	−	−	−	6,337	7,804	13,192	13,741
Colombia	−	−	−	−	7,317	10,531	12,575	12,865
Spain	−	−	−	−	5,079	6,763	12,268	12,688
Netherlands	−	−	−	−	4,532	8,700	12,095	12,470
Croatia	−	−	−	−	5,229	6,277	11,163	11,844
South Korea	−	−	−	−	9,170	10,398	11,353	11,642
France	−	−	−	−	5,602	7,944	11,159	11,537
Morocco	−	−	−	−	4,492	7,391	11,025	11,530
Bangladesh	−	−	−	−	2,937	6,289	10,009	11,520
Ukraine	−	−	−	−	1,459	4,741	9,924	11,069
Kosovo	−	−	−	−	−	2,288	9,487	10,420
Brazil	−	−	−	−	3,496	6,005	9,297	10,159
Total	35,627	61,657	299,879	790,445	1,003,798	1,384,929	1,955,569	2,019,733

The twenty-five largest groups of foreign-born persons in the Swedish civil registry as of autumn 2018 were:[45]

1. Former Yugoslavia (176 033)*
2. Syria (172,258)
3. Finland (150,887) *
4. Iraq (144 035)
5. Poland (92 759)
6. Iran (77 386)
7. Somalia (68 678)
8. Germany (50,863)
9. Turkey (49 948)
10. Afghanistan (43,991)
11. Thailand (41,240)
12. Eritrea (42 300)
13. Norway (41 747)
14. Denmark (40 011)
15. India (35 234)
16. China (33 288)
17. Romania (31 040)
18. Chile (27,996)
19. United Kingdom (27,658)
20. Lebanon (27,487)
21. United States (20,930)
22. Russia (20,930)
23. Vietnam (18,713)
24. Ethiopia (19,358)
25. Greece (18,142)

• This only lists Swedish Finns born outside of Sweden; There are ~569,000 people of Finnish origin living in Sweden
• The seven successor states of Yugoslavia and their historic counterparts (Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Kosovo) are counted as one group in many agencies across Sweden. There are also roughly 100,000 native-born "Yugoslavians" in Sweden

The ten most common countries of birth among immigrants registered in Sweden during 2016 (including asylum seekers who came in 2015) were the following:[46]

1. Syria (+51,540)
2. Eritrea (+6,580)
3. Poland (+5,078)
4. Iraq (+4,901)
5. India (+4,247)
6. Somalia (+3,794)
7. Afghanistan (+3,607)
8. Finland (+2,969)
9. Germany (+2,666)
10. Iran (+2,469)

The Swedish language is by far the dominating language in Sweden, and is used by the government administration. English is also widely spoken and is taught in public schools.

Since 1999, Sweden has five officially recognised minority languages: Sami, Meänkieli, Standard Finnish, Romani and Yiddish.

The Sami language, spoken by about 7,000 people in Sweden, may be used in government agencies, courts, preschools and nursing homes in the municipalities of Arjeplog, Gällivare, Jokkmokk and Kiruna and its immediate neighbourhood.

Similarly, Finnish and Meänkieli can be used in the municipalities of Gällivare, Haparanda, Kiruna, Pajala and Övertorneå and its immediate neighbourhood. Finnish is also official language, along with Swedish, in the city of Eskilstuna.

During the mid to late 20th century, immigrant communities brought other languages, among others being Persian, Serbo-Croatian, Arabic and Neo-Aramaic.[47]

The majority (56.4%) of the population belongs to the Church of Sweden,[48] the Lutheran church that was disestablished in 2000. This is because until 1996, those who had family members in the church automatically became members at birth.[49] Other Christian denominations in Sweden include the Roman Catholic Church (see Catholic Church of Sweden), several Orthodox churches in diaspora, Baptist, Pentecostal, Neo-pietistic (nyevangeliska) and other evangelical Christian churches (frikyrkor = 'free churches'). Shamanism persisted among the Sami people up until the 18th century, but no longer exists in its traditional form as most Sami today belong to the Lutheran church.

Jews were permitted to practice their religion in five Swedish cities in 1782, and have enjoyed full rights as citizens since 1870. The new Freedom of Religion Bill was passed in 1951, and former obstacles against Non-Lutherans working in schools and hospitals were removed. Further, that bill made it legal to leave any religious denomination, without entering another. There are also many Muslims, as well as a number of Buddhists and Baháʼís in Sweden, mainly as a result of 20th and 21st century immigration. There is also a small Zoroastrian community in Sweden.[50]

• Statistics Sweden
• Municipalities of Sweden
• Demographical center of Sweden
• Immigration to Europe
• List of countries by immigrant population
• Aging of Europe

• Statistics Sweden – Official Data Base available in English

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