Women account for more than 50% of Belize’s population

Government ministers met for their regular weekly Cabinet meeting today in Belmopan. As part of today’s agenda, the Statistical Institute of Belize presented its key findings in the 2022 census. SIB’s Director-General of the Statistical Institute of Belize, Diana Castillo-Trejo, presented the latest figures, which are expected to guide policymakers to strive for equitable access to services and distribution of resources. According to Trejo, one of the key findings was the fact that the country’s population is now made up of more women than men. 

Diana Castillo – Trejo, SIB Director General: “This last point is a continuation of a trend that we have been seeing slowly emerging over the past several decades. So if we look back 40 years ago to 1980 the situation was actually exactly reversed. There were slightly more males than females. Little bit over 50% of the population was comprised of males, and around 49. something percent was made of females. Decade over decade from one round of the census to the next, what we saw was gradual evening out until 2010 when we were at virtually 50-50. The number of males, the number of females was virtually even and in 2022 the trend continued in that direction where the number of females slightly overtook the number of males. So we have in total 195,695 males compared to just over 201,700 females as of 2022. Looking at changes in our age structure, the national median age increased from 21 in 2010 to 25 years in 2022, again signaling that our population is starting to gradually age. We see that across all the districts there was an increase in the median age. The highest median ages were seen in the Corozal and Belize district, where median age was 27. The lowest in the south, where the median ages of Stann Creek and Toledo were 22. And these are all noticeably higher than the median age that was seen in 2010.”

The data also shows that more Belizeans are now attaining higher education when compared to a decade ago.