Barbados is a small Caribbean limestone island located in the Atlantic Ocean, 431 square kilometres in area, 34 kilometres long at the longest point and 23 wide at the widest point. Our highest point is Mount Hillaby reaching a height of 337 meters, located in the north central area of the island.
We have a population of 279,254 people and a growth rate of 0.3%. Our largest city, which is also our capital city, is Bridgetown, which is located on the southwest coast of the island.
We have an average life expectancy of just over 71 years with a total median age of 34.15 years. More specifically, the median age of men is 32.99 years and for women is 35.28 years.
• 20.6% of the population is under the age of 14,
• 70.6% is between the ages of 15 and 64 years and...
• 8.8% is over 65 years old.
There are 0.93 males to every female, on average, in Barbados.
We, as Bajans, are very proud of our extremely high literacy rate. On average, we have a literacy rate of 97.4%. 98% of our men are considered literate and 96.8% of our women. We define "literate" as having attended school beyond the age of 15, which is the age at which we generally leave secondary school, so those figures would refer to how many of our population has pursued tertiary and further education.
Our monetary unit is the Barbados dollar (BDS.) which is pegged to the U.S. dollar at a rate of $1 U.S. to $1.98 BDS. Our government is a Parliamentary Democracy, with our Head of State being a Prime Minister, currently (2006) the right honourable Owen Arthur.
We have three major ethnic groups; the breakdown goes as follows, 93% black, 4% white and 3% Asian and mixed. Our language is English, although we do have a well developed dialect referred to as "Bajan".
Our main religions are 67% Protestant, which breaks down to 40% Anglican, 8% Pentecostal, 7% Methodist and 12% other forms of Protestant. Outside of Protestant, we also have the Roman Catholics weighing in at 4%. 17% of our population claims to have no religion at all and 12% of Hindu, Judaism, Muslim, and Baptist. |
