Thierstein (district)

Thierstein District is one of the ten districts of the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland, situated to the north of the canton. Together with the Dorneck District, it forms the ''Amtei'' (electoral district) of Dorneck-Thierstein. It has a population of (as of ).

Municipalities

Thierstein District contains twelve municipalities, with Kleinlützel existing as an exclave.

Geography

Thierstein has an area, , of . Of this area, or 40.5% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 52.2% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 6.9% is settled (buildings or roads), or 0.1% is either rivers or lakes and or 0.2% is unproductive land.Swiss Federal Statistical Office-Land Use Statistics
2009 data accessed 25 March 2010

Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 4.0% and transportation infrastructure made up 2.0%. Out of the forested land, 49.3% of the total land area is heavily forested and 2.9% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 34.0% is used for growing crops, while 1.9% is used for orchards or vine crops and 4.6% is used for alpine pastures. All the water in the district is flowing water.

Coat of arms

The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is ''Or a Doe Gules statant on a Mount of 3 Coupeaux Vert.''

Demographics

Thierstein has a population () of .

Most of the population () speaks German (12,376 or 91.8%), with Italian being second most common (212 or 1.6%) and Albanian being third (176 or 1.3%). There are 119 people who speak French and 16 people who speak Romansh.

, the gender distribution of the population was 50.3% male and 49.7% female. The population was made up of 6,104 Swiss men (43.8% of the population) and 909 (6.5%) non-Swiss men. There were 6,169 Swiss women (44.3%) and 749 (5.4%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the district 5,617 or about 41.7% were born in Thierstein and lived there in 2000. There were 2,278 or 16.9% who were born in the same canton, while 3,695 or 27.4% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 1,621 or 12.0% were born outside of Switzerland.

In there were 98 live births to Swiss citizens and 16 births to non-Swiss citizens, and in same time span there were 132 deaths of Swiss citizens and 6 non-Swiss citizen deaths. Ignoring immigration and emigration, the population of Swiss citizens decreased by 34 while the foreign population increased by 10. There were 12 Swiss men and 2 Swiss women who immigrated back to Switzerland. At the same time, there were 25 non-Swiss men and 21 non-Swiss women who immigrated from another country to Switzerland. The total Swiss population change in 2008 (from all sources, including moves across municipal borders) was a decrease of 28 and the non-Swiss population increased by 7 people. This represents a population growth rate of -0.2%.Swiss Federal Statistical Office - Superweb database - Gemeinde Statistics 1981-2008
accessed 19 June 2010

, there were 5,487 people who were single and never married in the district. There were 6,736 married individuals, 783 widows or widowers and 477 individuals who are divorced.STAT-TAB Datenwürfel für Thema 40.3 - 2000
accessed 2 February 2011

There were 1,350 households that consist of only one person and 430 households with five or more people. Out of a total of 5,324 households that answered this question, 25.4% were households made up of just one person and 70 were adults who lived with their parents. Of the rest of the households, there are 1,574 married couples without children, 1,949 married couples with children There were 229 single parents with a child or children. There were 81 households that were made up unrelated people and 71 households that were made some sort of institution or another collective housing.

The historical population is given in the following chart:

Colors=
id:lightgrey value:gray(0.9)
id:darkgrey value:gray(0.8)
ImageSize = width:960 height:210
PlotArea = height:150 left:100 bottom:50 right:100
AlignBars = justify
DateFormat = x.y
Period = from:0 till:14000
TimeAxis = orientation:vertical
AlignBars = justify
ScaleMajor = gridcolor:darkgrey increment:3000 start:0
ScaleMinor = gridcolor:lightgrey increment:600 start:0
PlotData=
color:yellowgreen width:40 mark:(line,white) align:center
bar:1850 from:start till:6896 text:"6,896"
bar:1860 from:start till:6250 text:"6,250"
bar:1870 from:start till:6504 text:"6,504"
bar:1880 from:start till:6374 text:"6,374"
bar:1888 from:start till:6298 text:"6,298"
bar:1900 from:start till:6270 text:"6,270"
bar:1910 from:start till:6682 text:"6,682"
bar:1920 from:start till:7294 text:"7,294"
bar:1930 from:start till:7832 text:"7,832"
bar:1941 from:start till:8589 text:"8,589"
bar:1950 from:start till:9515 text:"9,515"
bar:1960 from:start till:10435 text:"10,435"
bar:1970 from:start till:11359 text:"11,359"
bar:1980 from:start till:11266 text:"11,266"
bar:1990 from:start till:12210 text:"12,210"
bar:2000 from:start till:13483 text:"13,483"

Politics

In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the FDP which received 30.48% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SVP (26.61%), the CVP (23%) and the SP (10.94%). In the federal election, a total of 4,872 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 48.9%.

Religion

From the , 9,494 or 70.4% were Roman Catholic, while 1,619 or 12.0% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church. Of the rest of the population, there were 132 members of an Orthodox church (or about 0.98% of the population), there were 42 individuals (or about 0.31% of the population) who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church, and there were 147 individuals (or about 1.09% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 6 individuals (or about 0.04% of the population) who were Jewish, and 275 (or about 2.04% of the population) who were Islamic. There were 20 individuals who were Buddhist, 21 individuals who were Hindu and 10 individuals who belonged to another church. 1,407 (or about 10.44% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic or atheist, and 310 individuals (or about 2.30% of the population) did not answer the question.

Education

In Thierstein about 5,004 or (37.1%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 1,149 or (8.5%) have completed additional higher education (either University or a ''Fachhochschule''). Of the 1,149 who completed tertiary schooling, 68.8% were Swiss men, 21.8% were Swiss women, 5.8% were non-Swiss men and 3.7% were non-Swiss women.

During the 2010–2011 school year there were a total of 303 students in the Thierstein district school system. The education system in the Canton of Solothurn allows young children to attend two years of non-obligatory Kindergarten. During that school year, there were no children in kindergarten. The canton's school system requires students to attend six years of primary school, with some of the children attending smaller, specialized classes. In the district there were no students in primary school and 21 students in the special, smaller classes. The secondary school program consists of three lower, obligatory years of schooling, followed by three to five years of optional, advanced schools. 282 lower secondary students attend the district school of Thierstein.Canton of Solothurn - School statistics
accessed 13 March 2011

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thierstein (District)
Districts of the canton of Solothurn