In 2009, Switzerland had an estimated population of 7,725,200. [1] Foreigners who reside and work temporarily in the country make up 22% of the population. [42] Most of them (60%) come from European Union or EFTA countries. [42] Italians are the largest foreign group in the country, accounting for 17.3% of the total foreign population. They are followed by Germans (13.2%), immigrants from Serbia and Montenegro (11.5%) and Portugal (11.3%). [42] Sri Lankan immigrants, most of them Tamil refugees, are the largest Asian group in the country. In the In the 2000s, national and international institutions have expressed concern about what they believe is an increase in xenophobia, particularly in some political campaigns. However, the high proportion of foreign citizens in the country, as well as the integration of foreign elements into Swiss culture, underline the openness of Swiss society.
Languages
As a country located in Europe according to MILITARYNOUS, Switzerland is at the crossroads of some of the great European cultures, which have strongly influenced the language and culture of the country. Switzerland has four official languages: German (63.7% of the total population speaks it, together with foreigners residing in the country; 72.5% of residents with Swiss citizenship in 2000) in the north, east and center of the country; the French (20.4%; 21.0%) in the west; and Italian (6.5%; 4.3%) in the south. The Romansh, one Romance language which is spoken locally by a minority (0.5%; 0.6%) in the southeast, in the canton of Grisons, is designated by the federal constitution as a national language along with German, French and Italian (article 4 of the constitution), and as an official language if the authorities wish to communicate with people who speak this language (article 70), but federal laws and other official documents do not have to be written in this language. The federal government must communicate in the official languages, and in the federal parliament a simultaneous translation is given in German, French and Italian.
The German spoken in Switzerland is predominantly a group of German dialects known as Swiss German, although standard German is used in schools and written media. Most radio and television broadcasts are in Swiss German. Similarly, there are dialects of the Franco-Provencal that are spoken in some rural communities in the French speaking part, known as Romandie, among which are the Vaudois, the Gruérien, the jurassien, the EMPRO, the fribourgeois and Neuchâtelois. Finally, in the Italian part of the country the tesinés (a Lombard dialect) is spoken. In addition, the three official languages have some terms that are not understood outside of Switzerland, for example, words taken from another language (in German they use the word billette [43] which comes from French), or from similar words in another language (in Italian the term azione is used not for action, but as a discount or discount, which comes from the German Aktion). Learning another of the national languages is compulsory for all Swiss schoolchildren, so it is assumed that the majority of Swiss are bilingual.
Health
In 2006 life expectancy at birth was 79 years for men and 84 years for women, [44] one of the highest in the world. [45] Swiss citizens have compulsory medical insurance, allowing access to a wide variety of modern medical services. However, health care expenditures are particularly high, since since 1990 there has been an increase in the amount of the budget that is used to cover medical expenses, which in 2003 accounted for 11.5% of GDP ; this situation has been reflected in the high prices of the services provided. [46] With an increasingly elderly population and new technologies in health care, these expenditures are expected to continue to rise. [46]
Urbanization
Between two thirds and three quarters of the population lives in urban areas. [47] [48] Switzerland went from being a rural country to an urbanized one in just 70 years. From 1935 urban development occupied a large part of the Swiss landscape that had been vacated for the last 2,000 years. This urban sprawl affects not only the Swiss plateau, but also the Jura mountains and the Alps, and land use concessions continue to increase. However, since the beginning of the 21st century, population growth has been greater in urban areas than in any other area. [48]
Switzerland has a dense network of cities, where large, medium and small populations complement each other. [48] The Swiss plateau is densely populated, with a relative population of 450 h / km 2, and the landscape continually shows signs of the presence of man. The size of the largest metropolitan areas: Zurich, Geneva – Lausanne, Basel and Bern, tends to increase. [48] In an international comparison, the importance of these urban areas is greater than their number of residents suggests. [48] In addition, the two cities of Zurich and Geneva are renowned for the good quality of life they offer.
Religion
Switzerland has no official state religion, although most cantons (except Geneva and Neuchâtel) recognize their own official churches. In all cases they include the Catholic Church and the Reformed Church of Switzerland which are financed by church tax. These churches, and in some cantons the old Catholic Church and Jewish congregations, are financed by tithes paid by believers.
The Christianity is the predominant religion of Switzerland, divided between the Catholic Church (41.8% of the population) and various Protestant churches (40%). Immigration has brought Islam (4.3%, predominant among Kosovars and Turks) and the Orthodox Church (1.8%) as the most important religious minorities. [49] The 2005 Eurobarometer survey [50] announced that 48% of the Swiss interviewed were theist, 39% expressed belief in “a spirit or life force”, 9% were atheist and 4% agnostic. On November 30, 2009, the Swiss people approved by referendum the ban on the construction of minarets in the country. [51]
The country has historically been divided between Catholics and Protestants, with a complex mix of territories with Catholic and Protestant majorities throughout the country. In 1597, the canton of Appenzell was officially divided in two for Catholics and Protestants. [52] The largest cities (Bern, Zurich, and Basel) are predominantly Protestant. The center of the country, as well as Ticino, are traditionally Catholic. The federal constitution of 1848, under the recent impression of the confrontations between the Catholic and Protestant cantons that culminated in the Sonderbundskrieg, defines a consociational state, allowing the peaceful coexistence between both groups. In 1980 an initiative was voted to completely separate church and state but it was rejected, with only 21.1% of the population in favor.
