A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | CH | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9
| Demographics of Iceland | |
|---|---|
 Population pyramid of Iceland in 2020 | |
| Population | 376,248 (2022 est.) |
| Growth rate | 0.93% (2022 est.) |
| Birth rate | 12.96 births/1,000 population |
| Death rate | 6.56 deaths/1,000 population |
| Life expectancy | 83.64 years |
| • male | 81.41 years |
| • female | 85.97 years |
| Fertility rate | 1.95 children |
| Infant mortality rate | 1.65 deaths/1,000 live births |
| Net migration rate | 2.89 migrant(s)/1,000 population |
| Sex ratio | |
| Total | 1 male(s)/female (2022 est.) |
| At birth | 1.05 male(s)/female |
| Nationality | |
| Nationality | Icelandic |
The demographics of Iceland include population density, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population.
As of 2022, the Icelandic population was just over 376,000. About 86,000 residents (23.7%) were of foreign background.[1]
About 99% of the nation's inhabitants live in urban areas (localities with populations greater than 200) and 64% live in the Capital Region.
History
The population of Iceland probably wavered between about 30,000 and 80,000 for most of the time since settlement. Official statistics begin in 1703, since which the population has grown from 50,358 to 376,248 (January 2022).[2]
Migration
Settlement
Most Icelandic people are descendants of Norwegian settlers, and of Gaels from Ireland and Scotland who were brought over as slaves during the settlement of Iceland in the ninth century AD. Recent DNA analysis suggests that about 66 percent of the male settler-era population was of Norse ancestry and that the female population was 60 percent Celtic.[3][4] Iceland remained extremely homogenous from its settlement era until the twentieth century.
Emigration
Large numbers of Icelanders began to emigrate from Iceland in the 1850s. It has been estimated that 17,000 Icelanders immigrated to North America in the period 1870–1914, and that 2,000 of them moved back to Iceland; this net loss, 15,000, was about 20% of the Icelandic population in 1887.[5] According to historian Gunnar Karlsson, "migration from Iceland is unique in that most went to Canada, whereas from most or all other European countries the majority went to the United States. This was partly due to the late beginning of emigration from Iceland after the Canadian authorities had begun to promote emigration in cooperation with the Allan Line, which already had an agent in Iceland in 1873. Contrary to most European countries, this promotion campaign was successful in Iceland, because emigration was only just about to start from there and Icelandic emigrants had no relatives in the United States to help them take the first steps".[5]
In the wake of the 2008 Icelandic financial crisis, many Icelanders went to work abroad.[6]
Immigration
Before the 1990s, there was little immigration to Iceland, and most of it was from other Scandinavian countries: about 1% of Icelanders in 1900 were of Danish heritage (born either in Denmark or to Danish parents).[7] In the mid-1990s, 95% of Icelanders had parents of Icelandic origin, and 2% of Icelanders were first-generation immigrants (born abroad with both parents and all grandparents foreign-born).[8][9]
Immigration to Iceland rose rapidly in the late twentieth century, encouraged by Iceland's accession to the European Economic Area in 1994, its entry into the Schengen Agreement in 2001, and the country's economic boom in the early twenty-first century. The largest ethnic minority is Poles, who are about a third of the immigrant population. In 2017, 10.6% of the people were first-generation immigrants.[9]
Iceland is also developing relatively small populations of religious minorities, including Catholics (about 15,000 in 2020, 4.02% of Icelanders),[10][11][12] Baháʼís (about 400 in 2010),[13] Jews (about 250 in 2018),[14] Buddhists (about 1,500 in 2021),[15] and Muslims (about 1,300 in 2015).[16][17]
Research on the experience of immigrants to Iceland is in its early days.[18][19] There is some evidence that racism is not as acute in Iceland as in neighbouring countries.[20][21][22] But, while it is popularly believed in Iceland that racism does not exist there,[23] there is evidence that in some respects immigrant populations experience prejudice and inequalities.[24] For example, Iceland has a higher dropout rate from upper secondary school among young immigrants than the EEA average.[25]
Iceland does not formally collect data on the ethnicity or racial identification of its citizens, but does collect data of the origin and background group by birth.[26]
| Year | Pop. | ±% p.a. |
|---|---|---|
| 874 | 436 | — |
| 930 | 35,000 | +8.15% |
| 1100 | 60,000 | +0.32% |
| 1400 | 80,000 | +0.10% |
| 1495 | 40,000 | −0.73% |
| 1703 | 50,358 | +0.11% |
| 1750 | 48,241 | −0.09% |
| 1800 | 46,176 | −0.09% |
| 1850 | 59,586 | +0.51% |
| 1860 | 67,754 | +1.29% |
| 1870 | 69,463 | +0.25% |
| 1880 | 71,981 | +0.36% |
| 1890 | 70,581 | −0.20% |
| 1900 | 77,967 | +1.00% |
| 1910 | 84,528 | +0.81% |
| 1920 | 92,855 | +0.94% |
| 1930 | 106,360 | +1.37% |
| 1940 | 120,264 | +1.24% |
| 1950 | 141,042 | +1.61% |
| 1960 | 173,855 | +2.11% |
| 1970 | 204,042 | +1.61% |
| 1980 | 226,948 | +1.07% |
| 1990 | 253,785 | +1.12% |
| 2000 | 279,049 | +0.95% |
| 2010 | 317,630 | +1.30% |
| 2020 | 364,134 | +1.38% |
| Source: Statistics Iceland | ||
Migration data
| Year | Immigration | Emigration | Net Migration |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1986 | 2703 | 2964 | -261 |
| 1987 | 3616 | 2408 | 1208 |
| 1988 | 4151 | 2685 | 1466 |
| 1989 | 2755 | 3841 | -1086 |
| 1990 | 3166 | 3847 | -681 |
| 1991 | 3989 | 2982 | 1007 |
| 1992 | 2959 | 3213 | -254 |
| 1993 | 2698 | 2901 | -203 |
| 1994 | 2676 | 3436 | -760 |
| 1995 | 2867 | 4285 | -1418 |
| 1996 | 3664 | 4108 | -444 |
| 1997 | 3990 | 3921 | 69 |
| 1998 | 4562 | 3682 | 880 |
| 1999 | 4785 | 3663 | 1122 |
| 2000 | 5203 | 3489 | 1714 |
| 2001 | 5002 | 4034 | 968 |
| 2002 | 4215 | 4490 | -275 |
| 2003 | 3704 | 3837 | -133 |
| 2004 | 5350 | 4820 | 530 |
| 2005 | 7773 | 3913 | 3860 |
| 2006 | 9832 | 4577 | 5255 |
| 2007 | 12546 | 7414 | 5132 |
| 2008 | 10288 | 9144 | 1144 |
| 2009 | 5777 | 10612 | -4835 |
| 2010 | 5625 | 7759 | -2134 |
| 2011 | 5578 | 6982 | -1404 |
| 2012 | 5957 | 6276 | -319 |
| 2013 | 7071 | 5473 | 1598 |
| 2014 | 6988 | 5875 | 1113 |
| 2015 | 7461 | 6010 | 1451 |
| 2016 | 10958 | 6889 | 4069 |
| 2017 | 14929 | 6689 | 8240 |
| 2018 | 14275 | 7719 | 6556 |
| 2019 | 12006 | 7045 | 4961 |
| 2020 | 10429 | 7994 | 2435 |
| 2021 | 10944 | 6024 | 4920 |
| 2022 | 17487 | 7723 | 9764 |
| Background Groups | Year | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1996[28] | 2001[28] | 2006[28] | 2011[28] | 2016[28] | 2021[28] | |||||||
| Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | Number | % | |
 Icelanders
|
260,054 | 97.10% | 270,106 | 95.32% | 278,975 | 93.02% | 286,606 | 89.99% | 292,326 | 87.90% | 300,369 | 81.44% |
| Icelanders of two Icelandic parents (No foreign background) | 251,057 | 93.74% | 259,109 | 91.44% | 265,711 | 88.60% | 270,771 | 85.02% | 274,115 | 82.43% | 279,236 | 75.71% |
| Born abroad, Icelandic background | 3,490 | 1.30% | 4,214 | 1.48% | 4,880 | 1.62% | 5,449 | 1.71% | 5,971 | 1.79% | 6,634 | 1.79% |
| Born in Iceland: One parent born abroad | 5,507 | 2.05% | 6,783 | 2.39% | 8,384 | 2.79% | 10,386 | 3.26% | 12,240 | 3.68% | 14,499 | 3.93% |
| Total: Foreign | 7,755 | 2.90% | 13,255 | 4.67% | 20,916 | 6.97% | 31,846 | 10% | 40,203 | 12.09% | 68,423 | 18.55% |
| Immigrants | 5,357 | 2.00% | 10,073 | 3.55% | 16,690 | 5.56% | 25,697 | 8.06% | 31,819 | 9.56% | 57,126 | 15.49% |
| 2nd generation immigrants (Descendants of Immigrants) | 345 | 0.12% | 543 | 0.19% | 1,116 | 0.37% | 2,586 | 0.81% | 4,152 | 1.24% | 6,117 | 1.65% |
| Born abroad with one Icelandic parent | 2,053 | 0.76% | 2,639 | 0.93% | 3,110 | 1.03% | 3,563 | 1.11% | 4,232 | 1.27% | 5,180 | 1.40% |
| Total | 267,809 | 100% | 283,361 | 100% | 299,891 | 100% | 318,452 | 100% | 332,529 | 100% | 368,792 | 100% |
