Pre-Trip Information

The population of the United Arab Emirates, or UAE, totals around four million, but less than 20 percent are ethnic Emiris. Non-nationals include significant numbers of other Arabs including Palestinians, Egyptians, Jordanians, Yemenis, Omanis, as well as many Iranians, Pakistanis, Indians, Filipinos and West Europeans.

The majority of UAE citizens are Sunni Muslims with a small Shia minority. Most foreigners also are Muslim, although Hindus and Christians make up a portion of the UAE's foreign population. Arabic is the official language, while Persian, English, Hindi and Urdu are also spoken.

Educational standards among UAE citizens are rising rapidly. Enrollment in private schools has risen 145 percent from the early 1990s to the 2000s. In the same period, public schools experienced a 73.5 percent growth. Both citizens and temporary residents have taken advantage of numerous facilities throughout the country. There are several institutions of higher learning. The UAE University in al-Ain has around 15,000 students in an academic year, and female students usually constitute 80 percent of the student body. A network of technical-vocational colleges opened in 1989. The functional literacy rate for the total population is 77.9 percent. The number is gender-balanced with 76.1 percent for males and 81.7 percent for females.


Health and Welfare

In terms of health and welfare, the infant mortality rate in the UAE is 15.58 deaths per 1,000 live births. Life expectancy at birth for the total population is 74.75 years-72.28 years of age for males and 77.35 years of age for females, according to recent estimates. The population growth was estimated to be 1.5 percent in recent years, and the fertility rate of three children per woman.  Access to water and sanitation in the UAE is excellent.


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 ranking of 169 countries, the HDI placed the United Arab Emirates in the very high human development category, at 32nd place. 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.