Census 2011 : Rural - Urban Distribution of Population

This is an extremely important data set for planners and administrators in the major ministries and of course for all those in social sector fields. The new group of data files lists all the districts, their total population with rural and urban components, the population of the 0-to-six years age group and the population of literates, in all cases by male and female.

Highlights :

"For the first time since independence, the absolute increase in population is more in urban areas than in rural areas. The rural-urban distribution is 68.84 per cent and 31.16 per cent respectively".The level of urbanisation increased from 27.81 per cent in the 2001 Census to 31.16 per cent in the 2011 Census, while the proportion of rural population declined from 72.19 per cent to 68.84 per cent.The slowing down of the overall growth rate of population is because of the sharp decline in the growth rate in rural areas, while the growth rate in urban areas remains almost the same.

However, according to the census 2011 report, the number of births in rural areas have increased by nine crore in the last decade. The statistics reveal that while the maximum number of people living in rural areas in a particular state is 15.5 crore in Uttar Pradesh, Mumbai tops the list having the maximum number of people in urban areas at five crore.

The data also reflects that 18.62 per cent of the country's rural population lives in Uttar Pradesh and 13.48 per cent urban population lives in Maharashtra.

During 2001-11, the rate of growth of rural population has been 12.18 per cent. The growth of the country's rural population is steadily declining since 1991.

The data shows there is an increase in the overall sex ratio in the country from 933 in 2001 to 940 in 2011. However, the improvement in the overall sex ratio is largely in urban areas.

In rural areas in the country there has been an increase by only 1 point from 946 in 2001 to 947 in 2011. In urban areas there has been an appreciable gain of 26 points from 900 in 2001 to 926 in 2011.

The rural-urban literacy gap which was 21.2 percentage points in 2001 has come down to 16.1 percentage points in 2011.

There is more improvement in female literacy than in male literacy in both rural and urban areas, according to the data.

The gender gap in literacy has come down from 24.6 in 2001 to 19.8 in 2011 in rural areas and from 13.4 in 2001 to 9.8 in 2011 in urban areas.

Details :

Census 2011 official report

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