The demographics of Kazakhstan enumerate the demographic features of the

population Population typically refers to the number of people in a single area, whether it be a city or town, region, country, continent, or the world. Governments typically quantify the size of the resident population within their jurisdiction using a ...

Kazakhstan Kazakhstan, officially the Republic of Kazakhstan, is a transcontinental country located mainly in Central Asia and partly in Eastern Europe. It borders Russia to the north and west, China to the east, Kyrgyzstan to the southeast, Uzbeki ...

, including population growth,

population density Population density (in agriculture: Stock (disambiguation), 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 ...

, ethnicity, education level, health, economic status,

religious affiliations Religious identity is a specific type of identity formation. Particularly, it is the sense of group membership to a religion and the importance of this group membership as it pertains to one's self-concept. Religious identity is not necessarily the ...

, and other aspects of the population. Some use the word Kazakh to refer to the Kazakh ethnic group and

language Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...

(autochthonous to Kazakhstan as well as parts of Russia, China and Mongolia) and Kazakhstani to refer to Kazakhstan and its citizens regardless of ethnicity, but it is common to use Kazakh in both senses.UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office, ''Kazakhstan'', 2 Feb 2011
.

Demographic trends

Official estimates put the population of Kazakhstan at 18,137,300 as of December 2017, of which 44% is rural and 56% urban population. The 2009 population estimate is 6.8% higher than the population reported in the last census from January 1999 (slightly less than 15 million). These estimates have been confirmed by the 2009 population census, and this means that the decline in population that began after 1989 has been arrested and reversed. In a report released by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) in September 2021, the level of urbanization in Kazakhstan is estimated to reach 69.1% by 2050. The proportion of men makes up 48.3%, the proportion of women 51.7%. The proportion of Kazakhs makes up 63.6%, Russians 23.7%, Uzbeks 2.9%, Ukrainians 2.1%, Uygur 1.4%, Tatars 1.3%, Germans 1.1%, others 3.9%. Note that a large percentage of the population are of mixed ethnicity. The first census in Kazakhstan was conducted under

Russian Imperial The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. The ...

rule in 1897, which estimated population at round 4 million people. Following censuses showed a growth until 1939, where numbers showed a decrease to 6,081 thousand relative to the previous census done 13 years earlier, due to famines of 1922 and 1933. But since 1939 population has steadily increased to 16.5 million in 1989, according to corresponding year census. Official estimates indicate that the population continued to increase after 1989, peaking out at 17 million in 1993 and then declining to 15 million in the 1999 census. The downward trend continued through 2002, when the estimated population bottomed out at 14.9 million, and then resumed its growth.Population dynamics and ethnic composition of Kazakhstan in the second half of the 20th century
''Demoscope Weekly'', No. 103-104, 3–16 March 2003 Significant numbers of Russians returned to Russia. Kazakhstan underwent significant urbanization during the first 50 years of the Soviet era, as the share of the rural population declined from more than 90% in the 1920s to less than 50% since the 1970s. The fertility rate declined to amongst the lower rates in the world in 1999 and increased to again amongst the higher rates in the world in 2021. Dzhasybay beach

Population of Kazakhstan 1897–2018

:''Data sources'': Population 1897 from Russian Empire Census. Population 1926 from

First All-Union Census of the Soviet Union The 1926 Soviet Census took place in December 1926. It was an important tool in the state-building of the USSR, provided the government with important ethnographic information, and helped in the transformation from Imperial Russian society to Sov ...

. Population 1939–1999 from demoscope.ru, 2002–2008 from Kazakhstan Statistical Agency web site.Population and social policy
, Statistical Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan Rural/urban shares 1939–1993 from statistical yearbooks, print editions,''Statistical Yearbook of Kazakhstan'', Almaty, various years since 1980 2002–2008 from Kazakhstan Statistical Agency web site. 2009–2014 from Kazakhstan Statistical Agency web site.
Statistical Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan As of 2003, there were discrepancies between Western sources regarding the population of Kazakhstan.

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

government sources, including the

CIA World Fact Book ''The World Factbook'', also known as the ''CIA World Factbook'', is a reference resource produced by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with almanac-style information about the countries of the world. The official print version is available ...

and the

US Census Bureau International Data Base ''US Census Bureau International Data Base'' (IDB) is a global demographic product created by the United States Census Bureau The United States Census Bureau (USCB), officially the Bureau of the Census, is a principal agency of the U.S. Feder ...

, listed the population as 15,340,533,CIA Factbook (Kazakhstan)
Retrieved on May 2, 2008 while the

World Bank The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and grants to the governments of low- and middle-income countries for the purpose of pursuing capital projects. The World Bank is the collective name for the Inte ...

gave a 2002 estimate of 14,858,948. This discrepancy was presumably due to difficulties in measurement caused by the large migratory population in

, emigration, and low population density – only about 5.5 persons per km² in an area the size of

Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...

Vital statistics

Births and deaths

Current vital statistics

Structure of the population

Structure of the population (01.01.2021) (Estimates): The age group under 15 is considered below the working age, while the age group over 63(60) is above the working age (63 years for men, 60 for women). Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (01.VII.2020):

Total fertility rate

Total fertility rate by regions of Kazakhstan: Mangystau – 3.80, South Kazakhstan – 3.71, Kyzylorda – 3.42, Atyrau – 3.29, Jambyl – 3.20, Aqtobe – 2.70, Almaty (province) – 2.65, Almaty (city) – 2.65, City of Astana – 2.44, West Kazakhstan – 2.29, Aqmola – 2.19, East Kazakhstan – 2.07, Qaragandy – 2.04, Pavlodar – 1.98, North Kazakhstan – 1.72, Qostanay – 1.70, Republic of Kazakhstan – 2.65. Thus it can be seen that fertility rate is higher in more traditionalist and religious south and west, and lower in the north and east, where the percentage of Slavic and German population is still relatively high. According to the Kazakhstan Demographic and Health Survey in 1999, the TFR for Kazakhs was 2.5 and that for Russians was 1.38. TFR in 1989 for Kazakhs & Russians were 3.58 and 2.24 respectively.

Life expectancy at birth

Source: ''UN World Population Prospects''

Ethnic groups

History of ethnic composition

Kazakhstan's dominant ethnic group, the Kazakhs, traces its origins to the 15th century, when after the disintegration of

Golden Horde The Golden Horde, self-designated as Ulug Ulus, 'Great State' in Turkic, was originally a Mongol and later Turkicized khanate established in the 13th century and originating as the northwestern sector of the Mongol Empire. With the fragme ...

, numbers of Turkic and

Turco-Mongol The Turco-Mongol or Turko-Mongol tradition was an ethnocultural synthesis that arose in Asia during the 14th century, among the ruling elites of the Golden Horde and the Chagatai Khanate. The ruling Mongol elites of these Khanates eventuall ...

tribes united to establish the Kazakh Khanate. With a cohesive culture and national identity, they constituted an absolute majority on the land until colonization by the Russian empire.
Russian advances into the territory of Kazakhstan began in the late 18th century, when the Kazakhs nominally accepted Russian rule in exchange for protection against repeated attacks by the western Mongolian Kalmyks. In the 1890s, Russian peasants began to settle on the fertile lands of northern Kazakhstan, causing many Kazakhs to move eastwards into Chinese territory in search of new grazing grounds. The 1906 completion of the Trans-Aral Railway between Orenburg and Tashkent further facilitated Russian colonization.Olcott, M. B. (1995). The Kazakhs. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press. The first collective farms were formed in Kazakhstan in 1921, populated primarily by Russians and Soviet deportees. In 1930, as part of the first Five Year Plan, the Kazakh Central Committee decreed the sedentarization of nomads and their incorporation into collectivized farms. This movement resulted in devastating famines, claiming the lives of an estimated 40% of ethnic Kazakhs (1.5 million), between 1930 and 1933. Hundreds of thousands also fled to China, Iran and Afghanistan. The famine made Kazakhs a minority of the population of Kazakhstan, and only after the republic gained independence in 1991 did Kazakhs have a slim demographic majority within Kazakhstan. Demographics did shift in the 1950s and 1960s, when, as part of Nikita Khrushchev's Virgin Lands Campaign, hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens relocated to the Kazakh steppes in order to farm. As recognized in the 1959 census, the Kazaks became the second-largest ethnic group in Kazakhstan for the first time in recorded history, comprising just 30% of the total population of Kazakhstan. Russians numbered 42.7%. Since the Soviet Union's collapse, the numbers of members of European ethnic groups has been falling and Asian groups have been continuously rising. According to the 2021 census, the ethnic composition of Kazakhstan was approximately: 70.4% Kazakh, 15.5% Russian, 3.2% Uzbek, 2.0% Ukrainian, 1.5% Uyghur, 1.1% Tatar, 1.2% German, and <1% Korean, Turkish, Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Dungan, Kurdish, Tajik, Polish, Kyrgyz, Chechen.Central Intelligence Agency. (2014). Kazakhstan. In The World Factbook 2013–14. Retrieved from https://www.cia.gov/the-world-factbook/countries/kazakhstan/

Religion

References

Bibliography

External links

For current data, use these sites.
Population and social policy, Statistical Agency of the Republic of Kazakhstan (kazWorld Bank DatabaseCIA World Fact Book page on Kazakhstan

Russians left behind in Central Asia
{{Kazakhstan topics