Summary
Statistical table
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Extract
World affairs annual 2009.
IN THE 22 PAGES that follow, you'll find MAPS and the LATEST DATA on the world's 175 COUNTRIES--everything from languages and life expectancy to the percentage of young people in the population. To better understand the data, read the explanations accompanying the sample entry for India below. ON EACH MAP, you'll find summaries of key news stories to watch this year. And in our SNAPSHOTS section, you'll team, among other things, which countries have the most TV stations and which have the highest proportion of teenage brides and grooms. We hope you'll keep this issue FOR YEAR-ROUND REFERENCE, and that it will help you make sense of what's going on in the world as we head into 2009.
COUNTRY INDIA CAPITAL NEW DELHI MAJOR LANGUAGES HINDI ENGLISH MANY OTHER AREA & POPULATION Land mass in square mites and number of people. To calculate population density, divide population by area. For example, India has about 905 people per square mile. AREA (SQ MI) 1,269,340 POPULATION 1,149,300,000 URBAN POPULATION The percentage of a country's population living in urban areas. Urbanization is on the rise in developing countries, as people move to cities in search of work. URBAN POP. % 28 POP. RISE%/YEAR 1.6 POLITICAL SYSTEM & HEAD OF GOVERNMENT Type of government and name of current Leader. Manmohan Singh has been India's Prime Minister since 2004. POLITICAL SYSTEM & HEAD OF GOVERNMENT Parliamentary democracy Prime Minister MANMOHAN SINGH LITERACY RATE Percentage of people who can read and write. The first number is for men, the second for women. (A single number means a breakdown by gender was not available.) LITERACY RATE (%) 73/48 LIFE EXPECTANCY 65/66 DATE OF ORIGIN The year a nation was formed, gained independence, or took on its modern form. DATE OF ORIGIN 1947 % POP. UNDER 15 32 PER CAPITA GDP The value of all goods and services produced within a country in one year (gross domestic product), divided by population, it's one way to gauge a nation's wealth. The numbers are adjusted to account for differences in the cost of living from country to country. PER CAPITA GDP $2,700 HDI 0.619 POPULATION GROWTH The percentage increase in a country's population (the birth rate minus the death rate, without factoring in immigration) for the most recent year available. MAJOR LANGUAGES There are nearly 7,000 languages spoken in the world. Hindi is the primary Language of 42 percent of India's population. PERCENTAGE OF POPULATION UNDER 15 In India, 32 percent of the population is under 15, compared with 20 percent in the U.S. Compare those figures with Uganda, in Africa, where it is 49 percent. L...See the full content of this document
