Ethnic Groups
The majority of the 5.4 million inhabitants of Slovakia are Slovak (80.7%). Hungarians are the largest ethnic minority (8.5%) and are concentrated in the southern and eastern regions of Slovakia. Other ethnic groups include Roma (2.0%), Czechs, Croats, Rusyns, Ukrainians, Germans, Poles, Serbs and Jews (about 2,300 remain of the estimated pre-WWII population of 120,000).
While both international organizations (the United Nations and the World Bank) and the official Slovak statistics office offer population figures for ethnic groups, these figures seldom come close to agreement. Figures for the Roma population (for a variety of reasons) vary between 1% and 10% of the population. In the most recent survey carried out by the Slovak Government's Roma Plenipotentiary, the figure for the percentage of Roma was arrived at through interview with municipality representatives and mayors, according to how many Roma they think live in their jurisdictions. The figure arrived at by this means was in the region of 300,000 (about 5.6%). Note that in the case of the 5.6%, however, the above percentages of Hungarians and Slovaks are lower accordingly.
| Ethnic group |
census 1950 | census 1961 | census 1970 | census 1980 | census 1991 | census 2001 | census 2011 | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | |
| Slovaks | 86.6 | 85.3 | 85.5 | 4,317,008 | 86.5 | 4,519,328 | 85.7 | 4,614,854 | 85.8 | 4,352,775 | 80.7 | |||
| Hungarians | 10.3 | 12.4 | 12.2 | 559,490 | 11.2 | 567,296 | 10.8 | 520,528 | 9.7 | 458,467 | 8.5 | |||
| Romani1 | - | - | - | - | - | 75,802 | 1.4 | 89,920 | 1.7 | 105,738 | 2.0 | |||
| Czechs | 1.2 | 1.1 | 1.0 | 57,197 | 1.1 | 59,326 | 1.1 | 44,620 | 0.8 | 30,367 | 0.6 | |||
| Ruthenians | 1.4 | - | 0.9 | 0.7 | 17,197 | 0.3 | 24,201 | 0.4 | 33,482 | 0.6 | ||||
| Ukrainians | 13,281 | 0.3 | 10,814 | 0.2 | 7,430 | 0.1 | ||||||||
| Others/undeclared | 0.5 | 1.2 | 0.4 | 0.4 | 22,105 | 0.4 | 74,518 | 1.4 | 408,777 | 7.5 | ||||
| Total | 3,442,317 | 4,174,046 | 4,537,290 | 4,991,168 | 5,274,335 | 5,379,455 | 5,397,036 | |||||||
| 1 | ||||||||||||||
The official state language is Slovak, and Hungarian is widely spoken in the southern regions.
Despite its modern European economy and society, Slovakia has a significant rural element. About 45% of Slovaks live in villages with fewer than 5,000 inhabitants, and 14% in villages with fewer than 1,000.
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Slovakia
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