Population and Distribution
The population of Tonga numbers over 100,000 people. Most of the population lives on the main island of Tongatapu, but 45 of the archipelago's 171 islands are inhabited.
Cultural Legacy
Tonga's first settlers, believed to have come from Micronesia, arrived 2,500 to 3,000 years ago. The people of Tonga are ethnically Polynesian, except for a few hundred individuals of European extraction living in the country. The country traces its history as a monarchy through oral tradition dating back approximately 1,000 years.
Language
The two widely used languages are English, a legacy of the century and a half when Tonga was a British protectorate, and indigenous Tonga, an Austronesian language.
Religion
As a result of persistent missionary efforts that finally bore fruit in the 19th century, Christianity became the predominant religion in Tonga. Wesleyan Methodists are the largest denomination, with more than 30,000 members out of a total national population. The Roman Catholic and Mormon churches also claim considerable numbers of adherents.
Health and Welfare
The population of Tonga has a life expectancy at birth of 70.44 years of age (males: 67.9 years; females: 73.1 years), according to recent estimates. The island country has an infant mortality rate of 11.88 deaths/1,000 live births, also according to recent estimates. In terms of literacy, 99 percent of the population, age 15 and over, can read and write.
About 3.9 percent of GDP is spent in this country on educational expenditures. About 6.2 percent of GDP is spend on health expenditures. Access to sanitation, water, and health care is considered to be good.
Human Development
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 a recent ranking of 169 countries, the HDI placed Tonga in the high human development category, at 85th 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.