Sri Lanka's Overall Literacy Reaches 97.4 Pct, Census Shows

COLOMBO, April 12 (Bernama-Xinhua) -- Sri Lanka's overall literacy rate has risen to 97.4 per cent by 2024, with the gender gap in literacy closing, according to the country's report of the Census of Population and Housing 2024, reported Xinhua.

For the first time since the census began in 1881, the gender gap in literacy has closed, with male and female literacy rates reaching nearly equal levels of 97.9 per cent and 97.0 per cent, respectively, Shyamalie Karunaratne, director general of the Department of Census and Statistics, said. She added that digital literacy has reached 67.6 per cent.

Sri Lanka's total population stands at 21,781,800, with a national population density of 350 people per square kilometre, she said. The total fertility rate has dropped to 1.3, below the replacement level.    There are 87 elderly persons for every 100 children, and the median age has risen to 35 from 30 in the previous census conducted in 2012, she said.

A total of 3,223,413 people, or 157 per 1,000 population, reported at least one physical or mental difficulty. Of them, 727,293 were identified as having significant disabilities across six core functional domains: vision, hearing, mobility, cognition, self-care, and communication, said Karunaratne.

About 19.2 per cent of the population, or 4.18 million people, are reported to be suffering from non-communicable diseases, she said.

A total of 672,249 Sri Lankans are temporarily living abroad, most of them male, she said.  

--BERNAMA-XINHUA