This is a

demography 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 ...

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 ...

Bahrain Bahrain ( ; ; ar, البحرين, al-Bahrayn, locally ), officially the Kingdom of Bahrain, ' is an island country in Western Asia. It is situated on the Persian Gulf, and comprises a small archipelago made up of 50 natural islands and an ...

including

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 of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population. Most of the population of Bahrain is concentrated in the two principal cities,

Manama Manama ( ar, المنامة ', Bahrani pronunciation: ) is the capital and largest city of Bahrain, with an approximate population of 200,000 people as of 2020. Long an important trading center in the Persian Gulf, Manama is home to a very di ...

and

Al Muharraq Muharraq ( ar, المحرق, al-Muḥarraq) is Bahrain's third largest city and served as its capital until 1932 when it was replaced by Manama. The population of Muharraq in 2012 was 176,583. The city is located on Muharraq Island. Bahrain Int ...

Ethnic groups

Regarding the ethnicity of Bahrainis, a ''Financial Times'' article published on 31 May 1983 found that "''Bahrain is a

polyglot Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all Eu ...

state, both religiously and racially. Discounting temporary immigrants of the past ten years, there are at least eight or nine communities on the island''". These may be classified as: }), of mostly

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 ...

faith , - ,

Bahraini Jews Bahraini Jews constitute one of the world's smallest Jewish communities, although its origins go back to late antiquity. Talmudic sources refer to ports and islands on the Persian Gulf, indicating that Jews may have already settled in this regi ...

, , Jews have inhabited Bahrain for centuries. Most native Bahraini Jews are of Mesopotamian and Persian descent. , - ,

Hola In molecular biology, the δ (delta) subunit of DNA polymerase III is encoded by the holA gene in '' E. coli'' and other bacteria Bacteria (; singular: bacterium) are ubiquitous, mostly free-living organisms often consisting of one bio ...

, , Sunni Arabs from Persia , - , Tribal , , Urbanized Sunni Bahrainis of Bedouin ancestry, such as the

Utoob The Bani Utbah ( ar, بني عتبة, banī ʿUtbah, plural Utub; ar, العتوب ', singular Utbi; ar, العتبي ') is an Arab tribal confederation that originated in Najd. The confederation is thought to have been formed when a group of ...

Dawasir Al-Dawasir Al-Dawasir (Arabic: الدواسر) i is an Arab tribe whose main base is in the south of Najd in the governorates of Wadi Al-Dawasir, Al-Sulail , Al-Aflaj, and Al-Kharj. The tribe is divided into two groups, namely Al Zayed ( Azd) an ...

etc. Non-nationals make up more than half of the population of Bahrain, with immigrants making up about 52.6% of the overall population. Of those, the vast majority come from South and Southeast Asia: according to various media reports and government statistics dated between 2005 and 2009 roughly 350,000 Indians, 150,000 Bangladeshis, 110,000 Pakistanis, 45,000 Filipinos, and 8,000 Indonesians. 11,000 people from the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

live in Bahrain, 0.73% of its total population.

Population

Population census

Population estimates on July 1

Vital statistics

UN estimates

Registered data

Birth registration of Bahrain is available from 1976, death registration started in 1990. Between 1976 and 2011 the number of baby births roughly doubled but the birth rate of babies decreased from 32 to 13 per 1,000. The death rate of Bahrain (1.9 per 1,000 human beings in 2011) is among the lowest in the world.

Structure of the population

Population by Sex and Age Group (Census 17.III.2020):

Life expectancy

Source: ''UN World Population Prospects''

Religion

Islam is the official religion forming 74% of the population. Current census data does not differentiate between the other religions in Bahrain, but the country has about 9% Christian citizens and about 40

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

citizens. According to the website of Ministry of Information Affairs, 74% of the population are Muslim, with

Christians 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'' (Χρ ...

being the second largest religious group, forming 10.2% of the population,

Jews Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

making up 0.21%. The percentage of local Bahraini Christians, Jews, Hindus and Baha’is is collectively 0.2%. Bahraini citizens of Muslim faith belong to the Shi'a and Sunni branches of Islam. The last official census (1941) to include sectarian identification reported 52% (88,298 citizens) as

Shia Shīʿa Islam or Shīʿīsm is the second-largest branch of Islam. It holds that the Islamic prophet Muhammad designated ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib as his successor (''khalīfa'') and the Imam (spiritual and political leader) after him, mo ...

and 48% as Sunni of the Muslim population. Unofficial sources, such as the Library of Congress Country Studies, and ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', estimate sectarian identification to be approximately 45% Sunni and 55%

. An official Bahraini document revealed that 51% of the country's citizens are Sunnis, while the Shiite population has declined to 49% of the Muslim population.

Al Jazeera Al Jazeera ( ar, الجزيرة, translit-std=DIN, translit=al-jazīrah, , "The Island") is a state-owned Arabic-language international radio and TV broadcaster of Qatar. It is based in Doha and operated by the media conglomerate Al Jazeera ...

''وثيقة بحرينية: الشيعة أقل من النصف''
1973, retrieved 14 February 2021 Foreigners, overwhelmingly from

South Asia South Asia is the southern subregion of Asia, which is defined in both geographical Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth descr ...

and other

Arab countries The Arab world ( ar, اَلْعَالَمُ الْعَرَبِيُّ '), formally the Arab homeland ( '), also known as the Arab nation ( '), the Arabsphere, or the Arab states, refers to a vast group of countries, mainly located in Western As ...

, constituted 52.6% of the population in 2020. Of these, 50.9% are Muslim and 49.1% are non-Muslim, including Christians (primarily:

Catholic The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics worldwide . It is among the world's oldest and largest international institutions, and has played a ...

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

, Syriac Orthodox, and Mar Thoma from

South India South India, also known as Dakshina Bharata or Peninsular India, consists of the peninsular southern part of India. It encompasses the Indian states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and Telangana, as well as the union territ ...

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 ...

s, Baháʼís, and Sikhs.

Languages

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

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 ...

Kurdish Kurdish may refer to: *Kurds or Kurdish people *Kurdish languages *Kurdish alphabets *Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes: **Southern Kurdistan **Eastern Kurdistan **Northern Kurdistan **Western Kurdistan See also * Kurd (dis ...

Malayalam Malayalam (; , ) is a Dravidian languages, Dravidian language spoken in the Indian state of Kerala and the union territories of Lakshadweep and Puducherry (union territory), Puducherry (Mahé district) by the Malayali people. It is one of 2 ...

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
'' Balochi : Konkani :

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 ...

Sinhalese Sinhala may refer to: * Something of or related to the Sinhalese people of Sri Lanka * Sinhalese people * Sinhala language, one of the three official languages used in Sri Lanka * Sinhala script, a writing system for the Sinhala language ** Sinha ...

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 ...

: Punjabi :

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 ...

Armenian Armenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia * Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent ** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...

Filipino Filipino may refer to: * Something from or related to the Philippines ** Filipino language, standardized variety of 'Tagalog', the national language and one of the official languages of the Philippines. ** Filipinos, people who are citizens of th ...

References

Notes

Sources

*2003 U.S. Department of State website {{Asia topic, Ethnic groups in