Demographics of Poland
According to the 2011 census by the Polish Central Statistical Office (GUS), at the end of 2011 Poland had a population of 38,538,447, which translates into an average population density of 123 people/km (urban 1105 per 1 km², rural 50 per 1 km²). 61.5% of the Polish population lives in urban areas, a number which is slowly diminishing. Poland is the 33rd most populous country in the world (9th in Europe, with 5.4% of the European population). Total population of Poland is almost stagnant (population growth was 0.08%). Average life expectancy was 70.5 for men and 78.9 for women. In 2009, it was expected to be 73.1 for men and 79.5 for women. Population distribution is uneven. Ethnically, Poland is a very homogeneous country, with 96.7% of population being Polish.
Demographics of Poland
The population of Poland decreased by about six million due to the losses sustained during the Holocaust and German occupation during World War II (1939-1945), and Poland became one of the most ethnically homogeneous areas in Europe (next to the populations of Slovakia and the Czech Republic) as a result of radically altered borders and population expulsions at the end of and after the war. The post-war population movements were accompanied by two waves of forced migrations ordered by the Soviet and Polish communist authorities, including the transfers of sizable Polish populations (1944-1946) from the pre-war territories of Eastern Poland, which today form parts of Lithuania, of Belarus and of Ukraine, the transfer of ethnic Ukrainians back to the USSR (1944-1946), and the expulsion of Germans (1945-1950) to Germany from German provinces which fell into the Soviet Zone of Occupation and which the Soviets then awarded to the communist government in Poland.