Demographics

	Algeria	Morocco
Population	40,969,443 (July 2017 est.)	33,986,655 (July 2017 est.)
Age structure	0-14 years: 29.31% (male 6,148,568/female 5,858,922) 15-24 years: 15.3% (male 3,208,185/female 3,061,179) 25-54 years: 42.93% (male 8,906,160/female 8,682,894) 55-64 years: 6.81% (male 1,410,298/female 1,378,282) 65 years and over: 5.65% (male 1,079,218/female 1,235,737) (2017 est.)	0-14 years: 25.77% (male 4,450,360/female 4,308,955) 15-24 years: 17.04% (male 2,879,828/female 2,910,029) 25-54 years: 42.32% (male 6,956,186/female 7,428,129) 55-64 years: 8.13% (male 1,365,611/female 1,398,553) 65 years and over: 6.74% (male 1,034,188/female 1,254,816) (2017 est.)
Median age	total: 28.1 years male: 27.8 years female: 28.4 years (2017 est.)	total: 29.3 years male: 28.6 years female: 29.9 years (2017 est.)
Population growth rate	1.7% (2017 est.)	0.97% (2017 est.)
Birth rate	22.2 births/1,000 population (2017 est.)	17.7 births/1,000 population (2017 est.)
Death rate	4.3 deaths/1,000 population (2017 est.)	4.9 deaths/1,000 population (2017 est.)
Net migration rate	-0.9 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2017 est.)	-3.2 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2017 est.)
Sex ratio	at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female 0-14 years: 1.05 male(s)/female 15-24 years: 1.05 male(s)/female 25-54 years: 1.02 male(s)/female 55-64 years: 1.03 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.86 male(s)/female total population: 1.03 male(s)/female (2016 est.)	at birth: 1.05 male(s)/female 0-14 years: 1.03 male(s)/female 15-24 years: 0.99 male(s)/female 25-54 years: 0.94 male(s)/female 55-64 years: 0.99 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.82 male(s)/female total population: 0.97 male(s)/female (2016 est.)
Infant mortality rate	total: 19.6 deaths/1,000 live births male: 21.2 deaths/1,000 live births female: 17.9 deaths/1,000 live births (2017 est.)	total: 21.9 deaths/1,000 live births male: 26 deaths/1,000 live births female: 17.6 deaths/1,000 live births (2017 est.)
Life expectancy at birth	total population: 77 years male: 75.6 years female: 78.4 years (2017 est.)	total population: 77.1 years male: 74 years female: 80.3 years (2017 est.)
Total fertility rate	2.7 children born/woman (2017 est.)	2.11 children born/woman (2017 est.)
HIV/AIDS - adult prevalence rate	<.01% (2016 est.)	0.1% (2016 est.)
Nationality	noun: Algerian(s) adjective: Algerian	noun: Moroccan(s) adjective: Moroccan
Ethnic groups	Arab-Berber 99%, European less than 1% note: although almost all Algerians are Berber in origin (not Arab), only a minority identify themselves as Berber, about 15% of the total population; these people live mostly in the mountainous region of Kabylie east of Algiers; the Berbers are also Muslim but identify with their Berber rather than Arab cultural heritage; Berbers have long agitated, sometimes violently, for autonomy; the government is unlikely to grant autonomy but has offered to begin sponsoring teaching Berber language in schools	Arab-Berber 99%, other 1%
HIV/AIDS - people living with HIV/AIDS	13,000 (2016 est.)	22,000 (2016 est.)
Religions	Muslim (official; predominantly Sunni) 99%, other (includes Christian and Jewish) <1% (2012 est.)	Muslim 99% (official; virtually all Sunni, <0.1% Shia), other 1% (includes Christian, Jewish, and Baha'i); note - Jewish about 6,000 (2010 est.)
HIV/AIDS - deaths	<200 (2016 est.)	<1000 (2016 est.)
Languages	Arabic (official), French (lingua franca), Berber or Tamazight (official); dialects include Kabyle Berber (Taqbaylit), Shawiya Berber (Tacawit), Mzab Berber, Tuareg Berber (Tamahaq)	Arabic (official), Berber languages (Tamazight (official), Tachelhit, Tarifit), French (often the language of business, government, and diplomacy)
Literacy	definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 80.2% male: 87.2% female: 73.1% (2015 est.)	definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: 68.5% male: 78.6% female: 58.8% (2015 est.)
School life expectancy (primary to tertiary education)	total: 14 years male: 14 years female: 15 years (2011)	total: 12 years male: 13 years female: 12 years (2012)
Education expenditures	4.3% of GDP (2008)	5.3% of GDP (2009)
Urbanization	urban population: 71.9% of total population (2017) rate of urbanization: 2.26% annual rate of change (2015-20 est.)	urban population: 61.2% of total population (2017) rate of urbanization: 1.92% annual rate of change (2015-20 est.)
Drinking water source	improved:  urban: 84.3% of population rural: 81.8% of population total: 83.6% of population unimproved:  urban: 15.7% of population rural: 18.2% of population total: 16.4% of population (2015 est.)	improved:  urban: 98.7% of population rural: 65.3% of population total: 85.4% of population unimproved:  urban: 1.3% of population rural: 34.7% of population total: 14.6% of population (2015 est.)
Sanitation facility access	improved:  urban: 89.8% of population rural: 82.2% of population total: 87.6% of population unimproved:  urban: 10.2% of population rural: 17.8% of population total: 12.4% of population (2015 est.)	improved:  urban: 84.1% of population rural: 65.5% of population total: 76.7% of population unimproved:  urban: 15.9% of population rural: 34.5% of population total: 23.3% of population (2015 est.)
Major cities - population	ALGIERS (capital) 2.594 million; Oran 858,000 (2015)	Casablanca 3.515 million; RABAT (capital) 1.967 million; Fes 1.172 million; Marrakech 1.134 million; Tangier 982,000 (2015)
Maternal mortality rate	140 deaths/100,000 live births (2015 est.)	121 deaths/100,000 live births (2015 est.)
Children under the age of 5 years underweight	3% (2012)	3.1% (2011)
Health expenditures	7.2% of GDP (2014)	5.9% of GDP (2014)
Physicians density	1.19 physicians/1,000 population (2007)	0.62 physicians/1,000 population (2014)
Obesity - adult prevalence rate	27.4% (2016)	26.1% (2016)
Child labor - children ages 5-14	total number: 304,358 percentage: 5% (2006 est.)	total number: 500,960 percentage: 8% (2007 est.)
Demographic profile	For the first two-thirds of the 20th century, Algeria’s high fertility rate caused its population to grow rapidly. However, about a decade after independence from France in 1962 the total fertility rate fell dramatically from 7 children per woman in the 1970s to about 2.4 in 2000, slowing Algeria’s population growth rate by the late 1980s. The lower fertility rate was mainly the result of women’s rising age at first marriage (virtually all Algerian children being born in wedlock) and to a lesser extent the wider use of contraceptives. Later marriages and a preference for smaller families are attributed to increases in women’s education and participation in the labor market; higher unemployment; and a shortage of housing forcing multiple generations to live together. The average woman’s age at first marriage increased from about 19 in the mid-1950s to 24 in the mid-1970s to 30.5 in the late 1990s. Algeria’s fertility rate experienced an unexpected upturn in the early 2000s, as the average woman’s age at first marriage dropped slightly. The reversal in fertility could represent a temporary fluctuation in marriage age or, less likely, a decrease in the steady rate of contraceptive use. Thousands of Algerian peasants – mainly Berber men from the Kabylia region – faced with land dispossession and economic hardship under French rule migrated temporarily to France to work in manufacturing and mining during the first half of the 20th century. This movement accelerated during World War I, when Algerians filled in for French factory workers or served as soldiers. In the years following independence, low-skilled Algerian workers and Algerians who had supported the French (harkis) emigrated en masse to France. Tighter French immigration rules and Algiers’ decision to cease managing labor migration to France in the 1970s limited legal emigration largely to family reunification. Not until Algeria’s civil war in the 1990s did the country again experience substantial outmigration. Many Algerians legally entered Tunisia without visas claiming to be tourists and then stayed as workers. Other Algerians headed to Europe seeking asylum, although France imposed restrictions. Sub-Saharan African migrants came to Algeria after its civil war to work in agriculture and mining. In the 2000s, a wave of educated Algerians went abroad seeking skilled jobs in a wider range of destinations, increasing their presence in North America and Spain. At the same time, legal foreign workers principally from China and Egypt came to work in Algeria’s construction and oil sectors. Illegal migrants from sub-Saharan Africa, particularly Malians, Nigeriens, and Gambians, continue to come to Algeria in search of work or to use it as a stepping stone to Libya and Europe. Since 1975, Algeria also has been the main recipient of Sahrawi refugees from the ongoing conflict in Western Sahara. An estimated 90,000 Sahrawis live in five refugee camps in southwestern Algeria near Tindouf.	Morocco is undergoing a demographic transition. Its population is growing but at a declining rate, as people live longer and women have fewer children. Infant, child, and maternal mortality rates have been reduced through better health care, nutrition, hygiene, and vaccination coverage, although disparities between urban and rural and rich and poor households persist. Morocco’s shrinking child cohort reflects the decline of its total fertility rate from 5 in mid-1980s to 2.2 in 2010, which is a result of increased female educational attainment, higher contraceptive use, delayed marriage, and the desire for smaller families. Young adults (persons aged 15-29) make up almost 26% of the total population and represent a potential economic asset if they can be gainfully employed. Currently, however, many youths are unemployed because Morocco’s job creation rate has not kept pace with the growth of its working-age population. Most youths who have jobs work in the informal sector with little security or benefits. During the second half of the 20th century, Morocco became one of the world’s top emigration countries, creating large, widely dispersed migrant communities in Western Europe. The Moroccan Government has encouraged emigration since its independence in 1956, both to secure remittances for funding national development and as an outlet to prevent unrest in rebellious (often Berber) areas. Although Moroccan labor migrants earlier targeted Algeria and France, the flood of Moroccan “guest workers” from the mid-1960s to the early 1970s spread widely across northwestern Europe to fill unskilled jobs in the booming manufacturing, mining, construction, and agriculture industries. Host societies and most Moroccan migrants expected this migration to be temporary, but deteriorating economic conditions in Morocco related to the 1973 oil crisis and tighter European immigration policies resulted in these stays becoming permanent. A wave of family migration followed in the 1970s and 1980s, with a growing number of second generation Moroccans opting to become naturalized citizens of their host countries. Spain and Italy emerged as new destination countries in the mid-1980s, but their introduction of visa restrictions in the early 1990s pushed Moroccans increasingly to migrate either legally by marrying Moroccans already in Europe or illegally to work in the underground economy. Women began to make up a growing share of these labor migrants. At the same time, some higher-skilled Moroccans went to the US and Quebec, Canada. In the mid-1990s, Morocco developed into a transit country for asylum seekers from sub-Saharan Africa and illegal labor migrants from sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia trying to reach Europe via southern Spain, Spain’s Canary Islands, or Spain’s North African enclaves, Ceuta and Melilla. Forcible expulsions by Moroccan and Spanish security forces have not deterred these illegal migrants or calmed Europe’s security concerns. Rabat remains unlikely to adopt an EU agreement to take back third-country nationals who have entered the EU illegally via Morocco. Thousands of other illegal migrants have chosen to stay in Morocco until they earn enough money for further travel or permanently as a “second-best” option. The launching of a regularization program in 2014 legalized the status of some migrants and granted them equal access to education, health care, and work, but xenophobia and racism remain obstacles.
Contraceptive prevalence rate	57.1% (2012/13)	67.4% (2010/11)
Dependency ratios	total dependency ratio: 52.7 youth dependency ratio: 43.8 elderly dependency ratio: 9 potential support ratio: 11.2 (2015 est.)	total dependency ratio: 51.6 youth dependency ratio: 41.9 elderly dependency ratio: 9.7 potential support ratio: 10.3 (2015 est.)