* As of 6/24/2025
1 birth
Every 15.0 minutes
1 death
Every 18.9 minutes
1 emigrant
Every 18.2 minutes
1 person
Every 24.4 minutes
The ethnic tapestry of Armenia is 98% ethnic Armenians, while the rest are primarily Yazidis, with some Russian ethnicity present. Accordingly, the two official languages in Armenia are Armenian, and Kurdish, which is spoken by the Yezidi minority. The life expectancy in Armenia is higher than most other Soviet Republics with men expected to live to 71.6 and women to 78.3 years old. The median age in Armenia is 35.6 years old. Armenia has a large diaspora, with about 8 million Armenians living throughout the world. This is much larger than the current 3 million population of Armenia itself. The largest communities outside of Armenia are in Russia, Iran, France, the U.S., Canada, Syria, Lebanon and elsewhere. The northern portion of the country is more densely populated than the south.
Religious devotion in Armenia is traditionally Christian. Armenia was the first country to adopt Christianity as a national religion, and antiquity shows this occurred around 301 A.D. Over 93% of the current populous claims to be part of the Armenian Apostolic Church. Catholicism exists in Armenia, as well as Sunni Islam, both practiced by a small fraction of Armenian residents.
Armenia obtained its independence from the disintegrating U.S.S.R. in 1991, joined the United Nations in 1992, and became a full member of the Council of Europe in 2002.
In the years since Armenia’s independence, they have become increasingly self-reliant for natural resources and mining for copper, zinc, gold, and lead is the most significant portion of the economy. Most of their fuel, however, still comes from Russia. Trade in Armenia is somewhat limited since two of its neighboring countries, Azerbaijan and Turkey, have had their trade borders closed since 1991 and 1993, respectively, leaving just Jordan and Georgia as their most accessible trade partners. This limited trade in addition to the pervasiveness of monopolies throughout many industries has led Armenia to be particularly susceptible to the volatilities of the global market.
The Armenian population underwent a tragic forced reduction during World War I, as the region’s ruling party (the Ottoman Committee of Union and Progress) participated in ethnic cleansing of Christian Armenians in an event commonly known as the Armenian Genocide. From 1915 to 1917, an estimated 600,000 to 1,500,000 Armenians were either killed or deported in “death marches” from their homeland in Western Armenia to the desert in what is now Syria. Although the Turkish government continues to maintain that these events did not constitute a genocide, the majority of history scholars disagree, and more than 30 other countries have officially declared the action a genocide.
With the fall of the Ottoman Empire at the end of WWI, the region that is now Armenia endured political turmoil until the area was annexed by the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922. Under Stalin, the economy flourished and there was much industrial development, but the people suffered greatly through the 1930s. An estimated 175,000 Armenians died in World War II while serving as part of the Soviet army.
In 1988, Armenians began campaigning for the Nagorno-Karabakh region of neighboring Azerbaijan to be incorporated with the rest of Armenia. Later that year an earthquake killed 25,000 and left hundreds of thousands of people without homes. Shortly after the earthquake, tensions rose over the Nagorno-Karabakh region and thousands were forced to leave their homes.
