13.4 million Cambodians, and me and me and me…

The preliminary numbers concerning the census reveal that the population has grown with 2.5 million people in one decade.

 

On the 3rd of March at midnight, Cambodia officially was a country with a population of 13.4 million people. On Thursday 4 September, the Minister of Planning, Chhay Than, unveiled the preliminary census results, started last March, of which the final balance will be known in several months. The balance between men and women is at the advantage of the ladies. There are approximately 6.9 million Cambodian women and 6.5 million Cambodian men in the country. The growth rate of the population was 1.54% during the last decade. During the same period, the average number of members per household has decreased. Each household has in average 4.7 family members, compared to 5.7, ten years ago.
These numbers indicate that the country becomes more urbanised. 19.4% of the population lives now in the cities, while only 17.6% did so in 1998. The census reveals that the population density is only 74 people per square metre. As a comparison, Vietnam has 254 inhabitants per square metre and the Philippines, number one in the region concerning this situation, 288 people.
Kampong Cham province is the most populated province of the Kingdom, before the one of Phnom Penh and Kandal respectively.
Cambodians represent 2.3% of the population in South-East Asia, as it was in 1998 already.
The last census dating back to 1998 revealed that Cambodia had a population of 11,426,223 people, of which 5.9 million women. An expert predicted that this amount would double within 20 years. Halfway, it seems that we’re far from reaching this number. In 1962, Cambodia had 5.7 million people.