Pre-Trip Information

The population of Ukraine is around  46 million, and represents about 18 percent of the population of the former Soviet Union. Ukrainians make up about 73 percent of the total; ethnic Russians number about 22 percent. Romanians, Poles and Hungarians, as well as various other ethnic groups make up the remainder.

The industrial regions in the east and southeast are the most heavily populated, and the urban population makes up about 70 percent of the population.

In keeping with this ethnic composition, Ukrainian, Russian, Romanian, Polish and Hungarian are spoken. Indeed, Ukrainian and Russian are the principal languages, and about 88 percent of the population consider Ukrainian their native language.

In terms of religious affiliation, there are Ukrainian Orthodox affiliated with the Moscow Patriarchate, and Ukrainian Orthodox affiliated with the Kyiv Patriarchate. There are also Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox, Ukrainian Catholics, Protestants and Jews. Nevertheless, the dominant religions are the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, much of which retains its links to the Russian Orthodox Church, and the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Kyiv Patriarchate) is independent of Moscow.


Human Development

About 70 percent of adult Ukrainians have a secondary or higher education. Ukraine has about 150 colleges and universities, of which the most important are at Kyiv (Kiev), Lviv, and Kharkiv. About 70,000 scholars in 80 research institutes make Ukraine a leader in science and technology.

An estimated 99.6 percent of the total population, age 15 and older, can read and write (100 percent of males, 97 percent of females). According to recent estimates, Ukrainians have an average life expectancy at birth of 66 years of age (60 years for males, 72 years for females). The infant mortality rate is 21.14 deaths per 1,000 live births.

About  5.3 percent of GDP is spent in the country on educational expenditures. About seven percent of GDP is spent on health expenditures.  Access to sanitation, water,  and health care is considered to be generally good.

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 Ukraine in the high human development category, at 69th 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.