Sri Lanka
Census 2024
The first comprehensive digital census — shifting demographics, structural inequality, and political signals laid bare.
Total Population
Key Correlations & Hidden Signals
In 2012, there were 31 elderly per 100 youth. By 2024 it's 61. Sri Lanka is aging faster than most peer economies — pension and healthcare spending will dominate future budgets.
An estimated 1.6M+ working-age men are overseas (Gulf, Italy, Korea). This skews gender ratios domestically and concentrates economic remittance power in female-headed households.
Youth under 15 fell from 25.2% → 20.7%. Long-term electoral implication: youth issues (employment, student debt) will punch below their demographic weight as older voters dominate.
Gender Demographics
Gender ratio: 107F per 100M — driven by male emigration and post-war demographics
Female voters outnumber male voters in every province. Gender-sensitive policy (maternity, caregiving, female entrepreneurship) has outsized electoral leverage.
Age Structure
Median age ≈ 33 years — Sri Lanka is past peak demographic dividend
Settlement Type
Sri Lanka remains predominantly rural — urban migration is accelerating
Ethnicity
Religion
Literacy Rate
One of Asia's highest
Ethnicity × Religion Correlation
Political signalSri Lanka's ethnic and religious identities are almost perfectly aligned — the highest predictor of voting behaviour. Understanding this overlap is essential to reading electoral outcomes.
When a politician invokes Buddhist heritage, they are simultaneously signalling to 74% of the population. When policy touches the Muslim community (10.5%), it activates along both ethnic (Moor) and religious (Islam) axes simultaneously — creating double-weighted identity politics that is unique to Sri Lanka.
Population by Province
Electoral weightWestern Province alone holds over 1 in 4 Sri Lankans — and drives parliamentary seat allocation.
Colombo district alone has ~2.3M people. National policy is disproportionately Colombo-centric.
Northern Province (1.06M) is still below pre-war levels — post-conflict migration has not fully reversed.
Eastern Province is Sri Lanka's most ethnically mixed: ~40% Tamil, ~37% Muslim, ~24% Sinhalese.
Population Through History
143 years of census data (1881–2024)
Demographic Transition
UnderreportedBirth rate is collapsing while the death rate rises — two lines converging toward a historic crossover.
From 15.1 to 10.1 per 1,000 in 6 years. 2024: 220,761 births vs. 171,194 deaths — natural increase narrowing rapidly.
Just above replacement level (2.1). Urban TFR is already below replacement — rural families are carrying national fertility.
At current trends, deaths will exceed births within this decade. No major party has a pro-natalist or ageing preparedness plan.
Labour Market
Live dataLabour force participation has fallen 3 points since 2018 — driven by emigration, women leaving the workforce, and early retirement amid the economic crisis.
| Indicator | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | Q4 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Participation Rate (%) | 51.8 | 52.3 | 50.6 | 49.9 | 49.8 | 48.6 | 48.8 |
| Unemployment Rate (%) | 4.4 | 4.8 | 5.5 | 5.1 | 4.7 | 4.7 | 3.8 |
Female labour force participation is significantly lower than male. With 107 women per 100 men domestically and 1.6M+ men abroad, women are the primary caregiving and informal economy backbone — yet remain underrepresented in formal employment and political representation.
Economic Recovery
2025 dataAfter the 2022 economic collapse, Sri Lanka has staged a recovery — but per capita income remains low and the trade deficit persists.
Education System
School Census 2025Sri Lanka's education system is overwhelmingly state-run. Private schooling is a rounding error — making government education policy the single biggest determinant of national human capital.
University qualification rate among all A/L candidates in 2024. Only 43,204 new admissions entered state universities — just 24.9% of those who qualified. The university bottleneck is one of Sri Lanka's most politically charged issues.
With 92.3% literacy and near-universal school enrollment, Sri Lanka punches above its income level educationally. Yet brain drain (emigration of graduates) is eroding the return on that investment — a structural policy failure no government has addressed.
Agriculture & Food Security
Crisis impactThe 2022 fertiliser ban caused the worst agricultural collapse in modern Sri Lankan history. Paddy production crashed 34% in one year. The data tells the full story of government policy failure.
From 5.15M MT (2021) to 3.39M MT (2022) to 4.70M MT (2024). The fertiliser ban collapse and recovery in numbers.
Down from 527K MT in 2018 — a 23% decline over 5 years. Fuel costs and fleet aging are the primary drivers.
National average (2023). 92% from vegetable sources (2,610 kcal), 8% animal sources (228 kcal).
Tourism Recovery
2024: closest to pre-2019 peak, with 217,651 directly employed
Infrastructure & Connectivity
Physical infrastructure metrics (2023)
Poverty & Inequality
2019 SurveyPoverty is profoundly geographic. Estate sector workers and the war-affected North remain the most deprived — despite decades of development pledges.
Urban 0.49, Rural 0.44, Estate 0.36. Sri Lanka's overall inequality is high relative to its income level.
Urban avg income Rs. 116,670 vs. Estate Rs. 46,865/month — a structural divide entrenched since the colonial plantation era.
Mullaitivu (39.5% poverty) and Kilinochchi (23%) are war-affected Tamil districts with the highest poverty in the country — a direct legacy of the civil war that most Colombo-centric policy ignores.
Public Finance & Debt
2024 provisionalSri Lanka's fiscal crisis is structural: interest payments alone consume 44% of total government expenditure. Understanding who controls the budget is essential for holding politicians accountable.
Total debt Rs. 28.74T vs. GDP Rs. 29.9T — near 100% ratio. Sri Lanka exited formal default via IMF restructuring in 2024, but debt sustainability remains fragile.
Capital expenditure (infrastructure, services) is only Rs. 776B — less than 30% of what is spent on interest alone. Every rupee borrowed for development costs more in interest than it invests in public goods.
Health System
2024 provisionalSri Lanka's free public healthcare system is its most-valued institution — but the 2022 economic crisis severely strained medicine and equipment supply chains.
Over 55 million outpatient visits to government hospitals — equivalent to 2.5 visits per person per year. Free healthcare is one of Sri Lanka's most used public services.
7,411 thousand in-patient admissions — recovering to above pre-COVID levels after the 2021 collapse to 5.3M during the pandemic.
Free healthcare is constitutionally guaranteed. Any politician threatening its scope faces overwhelming public backlash. The debate is about quality and medicine supply — not the principle of free care.
Explore the Political Dimension
These census signals connect directly to what politicians say — and don't say — on Beacon.
69.8% Buddhist → the dominant political identity. See who invokes it and how.
12.3% Sri Lankan Tamil + 2.7% Indian Tamil. Track reconciliation promises vs. delivery.
Elderly population doubled since 2012. Who is promising pension reform?