Bangladesh’s population reaches almost 170m, final census data shows

The government has released the final data from a 2022 census

Staff Correspondent
Published : 6 Feb 2023, 02:18 PM
Updated : 6 Feb 2023, 02:18 PM

Bangladesh has gone from 144 million people in 2011 to around 170 million people in 2022, according to the final data from the latest government census.

The Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies released the final figures on Monday after analysing the data from the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics.

The exact number of people found in the census is 169,828,911, up by around 4.7 million from the initial data.

Planning Minister MA Mannan, State Minister for Planning Shamsul Alam, BIDS Director General Binayak Sen and BBS Director General Matiur Rahman, among others, attended the programme to release the data.

The sixth national census and house enumeration activities started simultaneously across the country on Jun 15 and continued until Jun 28.

According to a summary released by the BBS in July, women outnumber men in the country. The figures showed about 83.35 million females live in the country, compared to 81.71 million males.

More people still live in villages than in cities, but while the rural population has only grown by about 3 million in the past decade, the urban population has shot up by nearly 20 million.

The population of the third gender stands at 12,629.

Bangladesh conducted the first population and housing census in 1974, which found the population was around 71.5 million.

The fifth census was done in 2011 and the one scheduled in 2021 was delayed by the pandemic.