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City turns younger: census
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SHENZHEN'S population has soared to 7 million and is getting younger, with family size shrinking, working population rising and females outnumbering males, according to figures released on Monday from the city's latest census.
The city's population has increased by an astonishing 5.3 million people in the past decade, said Zhou Li, general-director of the Municipal Statistics and Information Bureau, adding the stunning rise of population represented the huge job opportunities created by the city's the economic boom.
Officials yesterday said that the city had 4.3 million permanent residents by November 1, 2000, if the previous benchmark was used in the census.
The different benchmarks in calculating "permanent residents" explained the dramatic rise from 4.3 million as released recently for the year 2000, Zhou said.
The latest census included people living in the city for at least six months instead of one year, the cut-off used in previous head-counts, the official explained.
The census suggested most residents in the city are young and working, with people aged between 15 and 64 accounting for about 90 per cent of the total, rising 7.24 per cent over the past decade.
It also recorded a lopsided ratio of males to females, with female population outnumbering males by about 80,000, or 2.3 per cent.
The ratio is particularly skewed in the industrial districts of Bao'an and Longgang, where women workers outnumber males by almost 9.53 per cent.
Shenzhen's population is also becoming better educated, with the college educated population accounting for some eight per cent of the total, a growth of 80 per cent from 1990, the census found.
The average size of families in Shenzhen has decreased by 0.87 people over the past decade to 2.63 persons per family, according to the census.
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