Pre-Trip Information

The Swiss Confederation (also known as Switzerland) has an estimated total population just under eight million people. According to the Swiss Federal Statistical Office (SFSO) Information Service, in recent years, the majority of the population was made up of Swiss citizens, while over 1.5 million were foreign residents. In other words, foreigners comprise a significant minority of the permanent resident population. According to recent estimates, nearly one-half of non-Swiss born persons residing in Switzerland are from the former Yugoslavia and Italy.

Also according to the SFSO Information Service, the Swiss population - in keeping with much of the rest of Western Europe - is aging. While the number of children relative to the population as a whole has been declining, the number of elderly has been increasing. Indeed, Switzerland now has more than twice as many residents over the age of 64 and four times as many over 80 as it did in 1950. In recent years, 23 percent of the population was age 19 or below, 28.9 percent was 20 to 39 years old, 32.7 percent was 40 to 64 years old, 11.3 percent was 65 to 79 years old, and 4.1 percent was age 80 or above.

 

In terms of ethnic and religious groups, ethnic Germans comprise approximately 65 percent of Switzerland's estimated total population. An estimated 18 percent of the population are ethnic French; 10 percent are ethnic Italian; one percent of the populationare Rhaeto-Romanics (or Romansch). Other ethnic minorities make up the remaining six percent.

 

In terms of religious affiliation, over 46 percent are Roman Catholic, while 40 percent are Protestant. Small groups of other Christian denominations, Jews and Muslims are also resident.

 

Switzerland is a linguistically diverse state with four official languages - German, French, Italian and Rhaeto-Romanic (or Romansch). According to Swiss government statistics, nearly 74 percent of the population speaks German as their first language, while about 20 percent speak French primarily. Approximately 4.5 percent speak Italian as their first language. Rhaeto-Romanic (or Romansch), a Latin-based language, is spoken by about 0.8 percent of the population (approximately 50,000 people). (Other estimates suggest that only 64 percent of the Swiss speak German primarily, while nearly 8 percent speak Italian as their first language). It should be noted that while these percentages are estimations of how many Swiss speak German, French, Italian and Romansch primarily, many Swiss speak or, at the least understand, more than one language.

The Swiss Confederation is comprised of 26 smaller political units known as cantons. Of these, 17 are German-speaking; four western cantons are French-speaking. In three cantons, both German and French are spoken. Italian is spoken in one canton (Ticino).

Three languages are spoken in Grisons canton: German, Italian and Rhaeto-Romanic (Romansch). It should be noted that while High German (standard German) is written by Swiss German-speakers, spoken Swiss-German has many different dialects. This is not the case in western, French-speaking Switzerland. Dialects (known as "patois") do exist, but they are not spoken with great frequency and are not typically written. Italian-speakers have dialects mostly used at home or among friends, but not for business or other public matters.

Rhaeto-Romanic (Romansch) has at least four dialects. As each of these dialects has its own written tradition, in 1982 - in an attempt to consolidate their language in the face of the far-greater numbers of German-, French-, and Italian-speaking Swiss-Romansch speakers created a standard form known as "Rumantsch Grischun."

Typically, school children are taught in their canton's first language and also learn one other official language. In the German-speaking cantons, children learn French; in the French-speaking cantons, children learn German. In the Italian- and Rhaeto-Romanic-speaking cantons, children learn both German and French. The multiple Swiss-German dialects can pose difficulties for the French-, Italian-, and Romansch-speaking Swiss-as they learn High German in school-but most often encounter the various Swiss-German dialects in daily life.

Increasingly, in addition to speaking their first language and understanding one other official Swiss language, the Swiss also speak English. Several cantons are contemplating teaching English-rather than an official Swiss language-as the second language. These proposals are not appreciated by many of the cantons and have set the stage for what may turn out to be a hard-fought national debate in 2001 on a proposed constitutional amendment mandating the teaching of an official Swiss language as the second language-as opposed to, for example, English.

 

 

Fewer births and longer life expectancies have led to the aging demographic trend which is expected to continue. The population growth rate in recent years was .24 percent. The infant mortality rate was 4.42 deaths per 1,000 live births according to statistics for the same year. Estimated life expectancy in recent years was averaged at 80 years of age -- 77 years of age for males and 83 for females.  The literacy rate is almost universal at 99 percent.

About  11.3 percent of GDP is spent on health expenditures in this country; about 5.2 percent of GDP is spent on educational expenditures.  Access to education, sanitation, water, and health is regarded to be excellent.

Similar to other Western European countries, Switzerland is increasingly concerned about its workers-to-pensioners (retirees) ratio, currently four to one. At the turn of the century, the ratio was 10 to one. This ratio is important because current workers in Switzerland pay into a social insurance scheme that provides for current pensioners. As the current demographic trends continue, fewer and fewer workers will be supporting more and more pensioners.

One notable measure used to determine a country's quality of life is the Human Development Index (HDI), which has been compiled annually since 1990 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). 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 recent rankings of all the major countries, the HDI placed Switzerland in the very high human development category at 13th 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.

 

Written by Dr. Denise Youngblood Coleman, Editor in Chief, www.countrywatch.com; see Bibliography for research sources.