Demographics of Albania

Demographic features of the population of Albania include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects. The demography of the Albania is monitored by the Institute of Statistics of Albania. The institute has performed demographic censuses since the 1920s. The latest census in Albania was performed in April 2011, and has been deemed as unreliable both within and outside Albania.

Albania is a fairly linguistically homogeneous country with ethnic Albanians forming the majority in the country. Albania had 2,761,785 inhabitants on 1 January 2023, according to the most recent INSTAT estimate.

The first official population statistic for Albania was the 1923 census, when the country had a total of 823,000 inhabitants. Previous censuses were carried out by the Ottoman Empire, which are not yet available. A shift in administrative borders in 1913 make comparison of various periods more complicated. Maddison from 2001, estimates that in Albania about 200,000 people lived up to the year 1600, and that the population grew to 300,000 by 1700, implying an annual average growth rate of 0.4% in that period. However, population growth accelerated from the declaration of independence in 1912 to 1944 to 0.7% per year. This was due in part because Albania had the largest birth rate and the smallest death rate in Europe at the time. After the second World War, population increase policies pursued by the communist government and a large life expectancy fuelled a 2.5% annual increase for the following 45 years. The growth strained economic resources during communism in a Malthusian fashion that led to the collapse of the regime and the emigration of about 20 to 25 percent of the population in the following two decades. Albania experienced a demographic transition starting from 1960s, when crude birth rates began a slow decline, despite a government policy that called for a population increase. After the 1990s, the population showed an average decline of about 0.3% per year, caused by emigration. In the 2001 Census, the population declined to 3,023,000 from almost 3,300,000 million in 1990.

The latest census in Albania was scheduled for April 2011, and the results will be published in the following months. The permanent population of Albania at the 2011 census had fallen to 2.83 million. The population density was 98.5 inhabitants per square kilometre, and the overall life expectancy in Albania at birth was 78 years in 2011. For the first time in the history of population censuses in Albania, the population in urban areas (53.7%) was larger than the population of rural areas (46.3%). The Albanian language is the official language, but minority languages are officially used in some local government units. Albanian is declared as the native language by 98.76% of the population. The Albanian people are considered one of the most polyglot people in Europe. They generally speak more than two languages, which are mainly French, Greek, Italian, and English, which are increasing due to migration return, and new Greek and Italian communities in the country. The main religions of Albania are Islam (59%), Roman Catholicism (10%) and Eastern Orthodoxy (7%) according to the 2011 census, which has been deemed unreliable by the Council of Europe as well as other internal and external organisations and groups.

Albania has a high Human Development Index of 0.764, ranking 75th in the world in 2016. In 2016, Albania had a total population of 2,786,026, 1,361,326 being males and 1,424,700 females. 42,922 inhabitants have left Albania and in the same year the number of immigrants in the country was 25,846.

Albanian demographics are difficult to ascertain and verify due to political corruption at the local and central level as noted by the Council of Europe.