Population
Today, the overall population of Nicaragua is less than six million. Most Nicaraguans live in the Pacific lowlands and the adjacent interior highlands. Over half the population live in urban centers.
In the mid-1980s, the central government divided the eastern half of the country, the former department of Zelaya, into two autonomous regions by granting the people of each region limited self-rule. The 1995 constitutional reform guaranteed the integrity of the regions' several unique cultures, and gave the inhabitants a say in the use of the area's natural resources.
Cultural Demography
Most Nicaraguans have mixed European and Indian ancestry, and the culture of the country reflects the Ibero-European and Indian heritage of its people. Only the Indians of the eastern half of the country remain ethnically distinct and retain tribal customs and languages. A large black minority (of Jamaican origin) is concentrated on the Atlantic coast.
Roman Catholicism is the major religion, but evangelical Protestant groups have grown recently, and there are strong Anglican and Moravian communities on the Caribbean coast.
Spanish is the official language of Nicaragua. English and indigenous languages are spoken on the Atlantic coast of the country.
Health and Welfare
In terms of the literacy, approximately 67.5 percent of those age 15 and over can read and write, according to recent estimates. Nicaragua's infant mortality rate is 27.14 deaths per 1,000 live births. The life expectancy at birth for the total population was estimated to be 70.92 years of age.
Note that 9.5 percent of GDP in this country is spent on health expenditures; about 3.1 percent of GDP is spent on education.
Human Development
A notable measure of human development is the Human Development Index (HDI), which is formulated by the United Nations Developme nt Program. The HDI is a composite of several indicators, which measure a country's achievements in three main arenas of human development: longevity, knowledge and education, as well as economic standard of living. In a ranking of 169 countries, the HDI places Nicaragua in the medium human development category, at 115th place.
Note: Although the concept of human development is complicated and cannot be properly captured by values and indices, the HDI, which is calculated and updated annually, offers a wide-ranging assessment of human development in certain countries, not based solely upon traditional economic and financial indicators.