The last comprehensive population and housing census was conducted in 1983, so it’s pretty cool to see the new results that were just recently released.
Here are the most interesting statistics that caught my eye:
1) 27% of the population (11.2 million people) have no form of identification!
2) Most houses have corrugated sheet roofs (imagine how loud that must be in the rains of monsoon season), bamboo walls, and wood floors.
3) Almost 70% of the population uses firewood to cook.
4) Only ~2% of the population uses flush toilets.
5) Rhakine State (the region that much of the recent news has focused on) has by far the worst condition for sanitation and safe drinking water. ~70% of the population, 1.5 million people, use a pit, buckets, “other,” or nothing for toilets, and ~60% of the population, 1.3 million people, drink from unprotected wells/springs, ponds/lakes, rivers/streams, waterfalls/rainwater, or “other.”
Furthermore, it seems that this data does not include some of the people living in potentially rougher conditions.
“In parts of Rakhine State, members of some communities were not counted because they were not allowed to self-identify using a name that is not recognised by the Government. The Government made this decision in the interest of security and to avoid the possibility of violence occurring due to inter- communal tensions.”
…
“A review of information on the enumeration in Rakhine State shows that not every household or population in the three districts of Maungdaw, Sittway and Myauk U were covered…it was estimated that a population of 1,090,000 was likely not to have been counted during the enumeration.”
Life in Myanmar 