Pre-Trip Information

An estimated 81 percent of the over 10 million inhabitants of the Czech Republic are ethnically and linguistically Czech. After the 1993 division of Czechoslovakia into the Czech and Slovak Republics, some Slovaks remained in the Czech Republic, and today comprise roughly 3 percent of the population. Other resident ethnic groups include Germans, Hungarians, Moravians, Poles, Roma and Silesians. Moravians are the largest minority group. Both Czech and Slovak are spoken languages in the Czech Republic.

Laws establishing religious freedom were passed shortly after the revolution of 1989, lifting oppressive regulations enacted by the former communist regime. Major denominations and their estimated percentage populations are Roman Catholic (39 percent), Orthodox (3 percent) and Protestant (4 percent). A large percentage of the Czech population claim to be atheists (40 percent), and a substantial number of Czechs describe themselves as uncertain of their religious beliefs and affiliations (13 percent). The Jewish community numbers a few thousand today; a synagogue in Prague memorializes the names of more than 80,000 Czechoslovak Jews who perished in World War II.

According to recent estimates, Czechs have an average life expectancy at birth of 76 years (72 years for males, 79 years for females). The infant mortality rate is 3.93 deaths per 1,000 live births. The population has an estimated average literacy rate of 99 percent.  About 4.2 percent of GDP is spent in the country on educational expenditures. About 7.6 percent of GDP is spent on health expenditures.  Access to sanitation, water,  and health care is considered to be generally very 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 Czech Republic in the very high human development category, at 28th 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.