TRNC population soars 36.5 per cent in 10 yrs

THE population of North Cyprus grew by an estimated 104,500 from 2011 to 2021, new data from the Statistical Institute shows.

The increase from the official population of 286,257 in the last census conducted in December 2011 to a projected population of 390,745 as of the end of 2021 represents a rise of around 36.5 per cent.

The figures were included in a 19-page “Population and Demographics Bulletin” covering the years 1977 to 2021.

The report was compiled from information included in “statistical annual reports and economic and social indicators”, which include data on topics such as population and population structure, birth statistics and fertility, death statistics and the causes of death, marriage

and divorce.

A breakdown of the figures revealed that there are more males than females in North Cyprus, with males making up 54.4 per cent of the population and females only 45.6 per cent of the population. This means that there are currently 119 males for every 100 females.

A population “pyramid” shows that the male to female gender imbalance is starkest among the 20-24 age group, while women outnumber men in the 75 and above age category.

The male-female split in the population was almost equal up until the mid 1990s, with a rate of 50.4 per cent females and 49.6 per cent males in 1995.

However that changed in 1996, when the first “comprehensive census” took place, and the gap between males and females widened again following a census in 2006 before narrowing slightly in the 2011 census.

The population of the TRNC has also been getting older since 1978, when children aged 0-14 made up 29.5 per cent of the population compared to 13.7 per cent in 2021.

In contrast the working-age population, which the Statistical Institute defines as people aged 15-64, has risen from around 61 per cent to 76.5 per cent over the same period.

The bulletin shows that women in North Cyprus are having fewer children compared to previous generations.

The “crude birth rate”, which measures the annual number of live births per 1,000 of the population, has fallen from around 20.2 in 1977 to 9.34 in 2021, with a sharp fall between 2019 and 2021, a period that coincided with the Covid-19 pandemic.

The total fertility rate, which the Statistical Institute says is the average number of children that would be born to each woman aged 15-49, has gone down from a high of 2.7 children in the late 1970s, to below the “replacement rate” of two children since 1988.

Further figures reveal that the average age at which people become parents has been rising, from 28.6 years old for fathers and 25.3 years old for mothers in 1977, to the ages of 34 and 30.8 respectively in 2021.

Looking at death rates, the “crude mortality rate” for North Cyprus has declined from around 10 deaths per 1,000 of the population from 1971 to 1981, to 4.4 deaths per 1,000 people in 2021, although the figure has risen since 2019, likely to be due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The pandemic also seems to have had an effect on life expectancy, which has fallen from around 84 to 83.1 years for women and from about 81 to 79 years for men from 2019 to 2021.

However life expectancy in North Cyprus is still far higher than in 1979, when women were expected to live to 72 years of age and men to 70.

A seasonal divide has also been shown between births and deaths, with July the most common month for birth registrations, while the winter months, December and January in particular, are when the most deaths occur.

Statistics for marriages and divorces show that while the number of marriages has been steady at an average of about 1,200 a year between 1977 to 2021 — expect for a sharp dip in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic began — the number of divorces has risen five-fold over the same period, from about 180 in 1977 to 895 in 2021.