Demographic features of the population of Macau include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations and other aspects of the population. Macau's population is 95% Chinese, primarily Cantonese and some Hakka, both from the nearby Guangdong Province. The majority of the remainder are of Portuguese or mixed Chinese-Portuguese ancestry. Some Japanese, including descendants of Japanese Catholics who were expelled by shōguns, also live in Macau. The official languages are Portuguese and Cantonese Chinese. The residents commonly (85.7%) speak Cantonese, Mandarin is spoken by 3.2% at home, about 40% are able to communicate in standard Mandarin. English and Portuguese are spoken as a first language by 1.5% and 0.6% respectively, while English is widely taught as a second language. The other popular topolect is Hokkien (Min Nan), spoken by a small percentage of the population. The creole Macanese language (Patuá or Macaista Chapado) is almost extinct.

Vital statistics

The following are data on vital statistics.

Current vital statistics

Structure of the population

Population Estimates by Sex and Age Group (01.VII.2020):

Life expectancy at birth

Macao is the territory with the world's second highest life expectancy behind Hong Kong. Source: UN World Population Prospects

Ethnic groups

The following are information on ethnicity and nationalities based on data from the Statistics and Census Service.

Place of birth

Immigration is an essential component of the population. Results of the 2011 Population Census indicated that 326,376 (59.1% of the total population) were born outside Macau, an increase of 3.0 percentage points over the last ten years. Analysed by place of birth, 255,186 (46.2%) were born in Mainland China, down by 1.2 percentage points from 2001. 226,127 (40.9%) were born in Macau, 19,355 (3.5%) in Hong Kong and 1,835 (0.3%) in Portugal. There were more persons born in other countries or territories as the number of non-resident workers increased. Among them, 14,544 were born in the Philippines, 7,199 in Vietnam and 6,269 in Indonesia, altogether taking up 5.1% of the total population. 1,942 were born in Europe other than Portugal, 2,252 in Americas, 959 in Africa and 672 in Oceania. Analysed by age group, 85.2% of the youth population (aged 0–14) were born in Macau, and 62.9% of those aged 35 and above were born in Mainland China. 35,578 people in Macau were originally from Fujian province in Mainland China, making up about 25% of the Mainland China-born people. The number of Fujianese in Macau increased after the 1999 handover.

Nationality

Analysed by nationality, 509,788 (92.3% of the total population) were of Chinese nationality, down by 2.9 percentage points from the 2001 Census; meanwhile, only 0.9% was of Portuguese nationality, a decrease of 1.1 percentage points. These figures can be misleading, because more than a 100,000 people in Macau are holders of a Portuguese passport, making them in effect Portuguese citizens. Over the last ten years, diversity of the various components of the population is enhanced as economic development has drawn people to invest, work or study in Macau; consequently, 37,695 (6.8%) were of other nationalities, up by 4.0 percentage points, with 2.7% being Filipinos. Macau is a Chinese community and those of Chinese ethnicity totaled 510,383, an increase of 94,030 over the past ten years; however, its proportion to the total population decreased by 3.3 percentage points to 92.4%. Those of wholly or partly Portuguese ethnicity totaled 8,106, up slightly by 333 compared with 2001; its proportion to the total decreased by 0.3 percentage point to 1.5%.

CIA World Factbook demographic statistics

The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated.

Ethnic group

Population

Male and female pattern

Age structure

Infant mortality rate

Total fertility rate

Nationality

Religions

Languages

Literacy

Immigration and crime

Health

Main causes of death