Demographics Of The United Arab Emirates
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demographic Demography () is the statistical study of populations, especially human beings. Demographic analysis examines and measures the dimensions and dynamics of populations; it can cover whole societies or groups defined by criteria such as edu ...
features of the
United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia (The Middle East). It is located at th ...
(UAE), including
population density Population density (in agriculture: standing stock or plant density) is a measurement of population per unit land area. It is mostly applied to humans, but sometimes to other living organisms too. It is a key geographical term.Matt RosenberPopul ...
, vital statistics, immigration and emigration data,
ethnicity An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
, education levels, religions practiced, and languages spoken within the UAE.


Population

The United Arab Emirates experienced a significant population increase in recent years as a result of major economic growth certain economic sectors. This lead to an influx of workers from diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, increasing the population from 4.1 million in 2005 to roughly 9.5 million in 2018. As of 2018, the number of UAE citizens is around 11.5% and the remaining 88.5% made up of expatriate workers, one of the largest proportion of expats in relation to the nationals. The largest group of non-UAE nationals are South Asian 59.4% (includes Indians 38.2%, Bangladeshi 9.5%, Pakistani 9.4%, others 2.3%), Egyptian 10.2%, Filipino 6.1%, other 12.8%. Female citizens and non-citizens account for 28% percent of the UAE's population due to the high level of male foreign workers. The majority of the UAE population falls in the age group of 25 to 54 year old. A large part of this can be attributed to the expatriate population of working men and women who fall in the age category. Population is heavily concentrated to the northeast on the Musandam Peninsula, the three largest Emirates - Dubai (2.7 million), Abu Dhabi (1.9 million) and Sharjah (1.4 million), are home to nearly 75% of the population. The population of the UAE in 2018 was 9,630,959, a 1.52% increase from 2017. In 2019, the population was 9,770,529, a 1.45% increase from 2018. The current population of the UAE stands at 9,991,089 million, a 1.02% increase from 2020. According to sources, the 2021 UAE population including expats is 9.99 million. The total expat population in UAE has now come to 8.84 million, which constitutes approximately 89% of the population. Emiratis or the UAE nationals are only 11% or 1.15 million today. While taking a closer look at the 2021 UAE population by nationality, there are people from more than 200 nationalities living and working in the country. Currently, the Indian population in UAE is the highest with 2.75 million, followed by Pakistanis with 1.27 million. The UAE has around 0.75 million Bangladeshi nationals, 0.56 million Filipinos, and 0.48 million Iranians. There are also people from Egypt (0.42 million), Nepal (0.32 million), Sri Lanka (0.32 million), China (0.21 million) and the rest of the world (1.79 million).


Population pyramid data


Education and employment

The United Arab Emirates government have always focused on increasing the quality of education, allowing female access to higher education and value their achievements. Currently, there are more women in higher education than men, with total graduates of 58 percent. However, the unemployment rate for women is about more than five times higher than men. The program that is the most popular is business with the highest number of graduates, and the second popular program is humanities and social science. The UAE relies on migrant workers, and they make up a majority of the population and will continue to increase and will be about 88.2 percent of the population in 2030.


Vital statistics


UN prospects

Source: United National World Population Prospects


Births and deaths


Life expectancy

Source: ''UN World Population Prospects''


Ethnicity of UAE immigrants

The UAE National Bureau of Statistics does not publish demographic data in relation to any nationality. The figures listed in the table below are estimates provided by each country's embassy. Source: ''United Arab Emirates Population Statistics'' '' *The figures for the countries cannot be directly sourced to embassy statements''.


Ethnic groups

* Emirati nationals 11.6% * Other
Arab The Arabs (singular: Arab; singular ar, عَرَبِيٌّ, DIN 31635: , , plural ar, عَرَب, DIN 31635: , Arabic pronunciation: ), also known as the Arab people, are an ethnic group mainly inhabiting the Arab world in Western Asia, ...
and
Iranian Iranian may refer to: * Iran, a sovereign state * Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran * Iranian lan ...
nationalities ≈18% *
South Asian South Asia is the southern Subregion#Asia, subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geography, geographical and culture, ethno-cultural terms. The region consists of the countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, ...
nationalities 59% * Other expatriate nationalities (includes
Westerners The Western world, also known as the West, primarily refers to the various nations and states in the regions of Europe, North America, and Oceania.
,
East Asian East Asia is the eastern region of Asia, which is defined in both geographical and ethno-cultural terms. The modern states of East Asia include China, Japan, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, and Taiwan. China, North Korea, South Korea a ...
s and
African African or Africans may refer to: * Anything from or pertaining to the continent of Africa: ** People who are native to Africa, descendants of natives of Africa, or individuals who trace their ancestry to indigenous inhabitants of Africa *** Ethn ...
s) ≈12%


Languages

Although Arabic is the official language, the most used language is English. English is also the main medium of instruction at all levels of schooling.
Emirati people The Emiratis ( ar, الإماراتيون) are the native Arab citizen population of the United Arab Emirates. Their largest concentration is in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where there are about approximately 1.5 million Emiratis. Formerl ...
speak
Gulf Arabic Gulf Arabic ( ' local pronunciation: or ', local pronunciation: ) is a variety of the Arabic language spoken in Eastern Arabia around the coasts of the Persian Gulf in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, southern Iraq, eastern Sa ...
. The
Achomi language Achomi ( fa, اچُمی), also known as Larestani and Khodmooni, is a Southwestern Iranian Persian language spoken by people in southern Fars and western Hormozgan and by significant numbers of immigrant groups in Kuwait, Bahrain, Iraq, Qatar, ...
(Persian dialect) is also spoken by a 303,000 people in the UAE. Other languages spoken in the UAE, due to immigration, include other Arabic dialects (such as
Levantine Arabic Levantine Arabic, also called Shami (autonym: or ), is a group of mutually intelligible vernacular Arabic varieties spoken in the Levant, in Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Israel, and Turkey (historically in Adana, Mersin and Hatay on ...
),
Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 22 scheduled languages of India. Malayalam was des ...
(1,060,000 speakers in the UAEUnited Arab Emirates
on
Ethnologue ''Ethnologue: Languages of the World'' (stylized as ''Ethnoloɠue'') is an annual reference publication in print and online that provides statistics and other information on the living languages of the world. It is the world's most comprehensiv ...
),
Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
''
Hindi Hindi (Devanāgarī: or , ), or more precisely Modern Standard Hindi (Devanagari: ), is an Indo-Aryan language spoken chiefly in the Hindi Belt region encompassing parts of northern, central, eastern, and western India. Hindi has been de ...
,
Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...
,
Persian Persian may refer to: * People and things from Iran, historically called ''Persia'' in the English language ** Persians, the majority ethnic group in Iran, not to be conflated with the Iranic peoples ** Persian language, an Iranian language of the ...
, Cebuano,
Pashto Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani (). Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official languages ...
(144,000 speakers in the UAE),
Kannada Kannada (; ಕನ್ನಡ, ), originally romanised Canarese, is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by the people of Karnataka in southwestern India, with minorities in all neighbouring states. It has around 47 million native s ...
,
Bengali Bengali or Bengalee, or Bengalese may refer to: *something of, from, or related to Bengal, a large region in South Asia * Bengalis, an ethnic and linguistic group of the region * Bengali language, the language they speak ** Bengali alphabet, the w ...
(337,000 speakers in the UAE), Punjabi (201,000 speakers in the UAE),
Odia Odia, also spelled Oriya or Odiya, may refer to: * Odia people in Odisha, India * Odia language, an Indian language, belonging to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language family * Odia alphabet, a writing system used for the Odia languag ...
,
Telugu Telugu may refer to: * Telugu language, a major Dravidian language of India *Telugu people, an ethno-linguistic group of India * Telugu script, used to write the Telugu language ** Telugu (Unicode block), a block of Telugu characters in Unicode S ...
, Baluchi and Southern Baluchi (379,000 speakers in the UAE), Sinhala (121,000 speakers in the UAE),
Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...
, Somali, Tagalog (303,000 speakers in the UAE), Nepali,
Mandarin Mandarin or The Mandarin may refer to: Language * Mandarin Chinese, branch of Chinese originally spoken in northern parts of the country ** Standard Chinese or Modern Standard Mandarin, the official language of China ** Taiwanese Mandarin, Stand ...
,
Tamil Tamil may refer to: * Tamils, an ethnic group native to India and some other parts of Asia **Sri Lankan Tamils, Tamil people native to Sri Lanka also called ilankai tamils **Tamil Malaysians, Tamil people native to Malaysia * Tamil language, nativ ...
(455,000 speakers in the UAE),
Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
,
Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...
and
Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
. In 2019, Abu Dhabi included Hindi as third official court language. Currently, the UAE government provides lectures and tests to obtain a driving license in Urdu, Hindi, Malayalam, Tamil and Bengali, besides Arabic and English.Not about numbers: Why Abu Dhabi labour court chose Hindi over Malayalam
/ref>


Practiced religions

Religions are represented in the UAE as follows: *
Islam Islam (; ar, ۘالِإسلَام, , ) is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic Monotheism#Islam, monotheistic religion centred primarily around the Quran, a religious text considered by Muslims to be the direct word of God in Islam, God (or ...
(official) 76% *
Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...
9% * Other 15% (primarily
Hindu Hindus (; ) are people who religiously adhere to Hinduism.Jeffery D. Long (2007), A Vision for Hinduism, IB Tauris, , pages 35–37 Historically, the term has also been used as a geographical, cultural, and later religious identifier for ...
and
Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...
, a small minority are
Parsis Parsis () or Parsees are an ethnoreligious group of the Indian subcontinent adhering to Zoroastrianism. They are descended from Persians who migrated to Medieval India during and after the Arab conquest of Iran (part of the early Muslim co ...
, Baháʼí,
Druze The Druze (; ar, دَرْزِيٌّ, ' or ', , ') are an Arabic-speaking esoteric ethnoreligious group from Western Asia who adhere to the Druze faith, an Abrahamic, monotheistic, syncretic, and ethnic religion based on the teachings of ...
,
Sikh Sikhs ( or ; pa, ਸਿੱਖ, ' ) are people who adhere to Sikhism, Sikhism (Sikhi), a Monotheism, monotheistic religion that originated in the late 15th century in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent, based on the revelation of Gu ...
, etc.)


See also

*
Demographics of Dubai The population of Dubai is estimated to be 3.5 million as of April 2022 according to government data. , 3.2 million were non-Emirati, and 69% were male. About 58.50% of the population is concentrated in the 25-44 age group. This unnatural age a ...
*
Emirati diaspora The Emirati diaspora ( ar, الإماراتيون المغتربون) comprises Emirati citizens who have emigrated from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to other countries, and people of Emirati descent born or residing in other countries. Backgro ...


References

{{Asia topic, Ethnic groups in pt:Emirados Árabes Unidos#Demografia