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Luxembourg: Demographics Overview

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In many ways, Luxembourg is the poster child for the European Union (EU). Not only has the country’s economy flourished within the EU, but its population is a mosaic of peoples from all across the continent. Luxembourg’s diverse population is actually attributable, however, to causes both ancient and modern. Centuries of influence (sometimes domination) by neighboring nations and recent open-door policies on immigration have combined to make Luxembourg one of the world’s great melting pots.

During the twentieth century, Luxembourg’s population more than doubled, to approximately 450,000 people. The country has a long rural history, and most towns still have fewer than ten thousand people. Even the capital, Luxembourg City, has only eighty thousand residents.

The country’s population continues to slowly grow, but the current growth is largely due to immigration rather than to births among native Luxembourgers. Immigrants are drawn by the economy’s promise of jobs and by Luxembourg’s policies encouraging foreign investment. Nearly forty percent of the population is foreign-born, including more than fifty percent of the residents of Luxembourg City. The Portuguese make up the greatest number of immigrants, followed by Italians, French, Belgians, and Germans.

The combination of a small population and a strong economy provides Luxembourgers with incomes that are among the highest in the world. As you would expect from such a wealthy country (read: good health care), life expectancy is high: the average woman in Luxembourg lives to see her eighty-second birthday, and men live to be nearly seventy-six. The high life expectancy combines with the low birthrate to create an aging population; the current median age is close to forty.

Luxembourgers are historically Catholic, and as approximately ninety percent of the population professes Catholicism, the religion remains the dominant religious force. The number of practicing Catholics, however, is much lower than ninety percent, and there is a Protestant presence, as well as a Muslim population.

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