NORDRHEIN - WESTFALEN - Population
Population still going up
The number of inhabitants in North Rhine-Westphalia went up by around 50% from 1946 to 1975. There was a decline until 1987 but this was followed by a further steady rise resulting in a total population of 18 076 355 in 2002. The surplus of births over deaths was considerable until 1972, but the mortality rate has exceeded the birth rate since 1972, apart from at the beginning of the 1990s and in 1997 when there was a small birth surplus. The birth rate nevertheless decreased in the last decade (from 11.7 births per 1 000 inhabitants in 1990 to 9.1 in 2002). There are now more people over 64 than under 15. In 2001 the infant mortality rate of 5.0 deaths per 1 000 births was just over the national average.
Until the beginning of the 1970s, migration into North Rhine-Westphalia was a major influence, normally amounting to several hundred thousand a year apart from in 1966-67. There followed a decade in which the migratory balance was partly negative (1975-77, 1982-84) and partly positive. During the last decade the number of immigrants to the Land was again higher than the number of emigrants, but the incoming flow decreased between 1991 and 2002.
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