Lithuania Country Overview
Where is Lithuania located? The state of Lithuania is located in northern Europe and at the same time it is the most southern of the three Baltic states. The time zone map, which divides all countries into time zones, shows that Lithuania is in a time zone called “Eastern European Time” (EET). There the time difference to the coordinated world time is 2 hours (UTC+2). In summer, the time is put forward one hour to summer time (“Eastern European Summer Time”).
Population Distribution
As of 2023, the latest population of Lithuania is 2,731,464, based on our calculation of the current data from UN (United Nations).
Total population | 2,731,464 |
Population growth rate | -1.13% |
Birth rate | 9.90 births per 1,000 people |
Life expectancy | |
Overall | 75.77 years |
Men | 70.96 years |
Women | 80.84 years |
Age structure | |
0-14 years | 15.11% |
15-64 years | 64.97% |
65 years and above | 19.91% |
Median age | 43.10 years |
Gender ratio (Male to Female) | 0.89 |
Population density | 41.83 residents per km² |
Urbanization | 66.70% |
Ethnicities | |
84.2% Lithuanians, 6.6% Poles, 5.8% Russians, 1.2% Belarusians, 0.5% Ukrainians; Lipka Tatars, Karaeans and others – proportion of foreigners 2015: 0.8% | |
Religions | |
Catholics (Roman Catholic) (primarily), Lutherans, Russian Orthodox, Protestants, Evangelical Christians, Baptists, Muslims, Jews | |
Human Development Index (HDI) | 0.869 |
HDI ranking | 34th out of 194 |
People in Lithuania
2.8 million people live in Lithuania. Many residents have emigrated since independence in 1991. This trend continues to this day. A particularly large number of Lithuanians live in Great Britain, Ireland and Norway. In addition, because only a few babies are born, the number of residents has been falling for years. Each woman has an average of 1.6 children.
68 percent of the population live in a city. With a number of 500,000, one sixth of all residents live in Vilnius. The second largest city is Kaunas with almost 300,000 people.
Most of the residents are Lithuanians, 84 percent. In addition, 5.8 percent Russians live in the country and 6.6 percent Poles. Smaller minorities with 1.2 and 0.5 percent are Belarusians and Ukrainians.
Languages in Lithuania
Most of the residents of Lithuania speak Lithuanian. Polish and Russian are also spoken by the Poles and Russians who live in Lithuania. Polish is spoken particularly around Vilnius in the southeast. Because Russian was spoken in Lithuania for decades when it was part of the Soviet Union, a special Polish has developed that is mixed with Russian expressions. This is called Lithuanian Polish.
Russian was never the first official language in Lithuania. As a lingua franca, however, it was used by many people. Forms and street signs were bilingual at the time.
Lithuanian
Lithuanian is a Baltic language. Lithuanian has retained many of the characteristics of the original Indo-European language. Particular care is taken to preserve the language in its purity. So foreign words should be avoided and new terms are created for them. Names are also colored in Lithuanian. Harry Potter is called Haris Poteris in Lithuania.
Male nouns have the endings -as, -is or -us, and feminine nouns have -a or -ė. The word Schlagbaum can be found as a loan word in Lithuanian and is then called šlagbaumas. Here you can also see that nouns in Lithuanian are capitalized, only proper names are capitalized.
The Lithuanian alphabet
Lithuanian is written with Latin letters (this is the name of the letters with which we write German, as in this text). There are also some characters in Lithuanian such as ticks and dots. There are, for example, ą, č, ę, ė, š or ū.
Religions in Lithuania
Most of the residents of Lithuania are Christians. Here the Catholics form the vast majority with 80 percent of all residents. 4.1 percent belong to the Russian Orthodox Church. 2.1 percent are Protestants.