Population and Territory:  According to the data from the 2002 Census, Paraguay has a little more than 5 million inhabitants, of which 56.7% live in urban areas and 43.3% live in rural areas.  In demographic terms, the country is in a moderate transition, in which the infant mortality rate is slowly decreasing and fertility rates remain high, all signs that point to a population mainly of young people.

Economy:  The principle economic support of the country is agriculture and income from its hydroelectric plants. At the international and regional level, the country shows low levels of average income.  In addition, Paraguay shows extremely high levels of concentrated income, together with great disparity in terms of living standards between the urban and rural zones (in the latter case, deprivation and limitations are extremely high).

Services:  This is demonstrated in the scarce coverage of essential services.  Only four of ten Paraguayans have access to drinkable water, more than half of the population burns their trash (because there is no trash collection services available), more than half of the population is in need of hygienic services connected to a public network, and four in ten use firewood to cook.  In all of these cases, the conditions are worse in rural areas, especially in areas which the population live in poverty.  Poverty has very well-defined characteristics: there exists inequality in territory, gender (women are more affected), material subsistence (especially affecting children and adolescents), and language or ethnicity (40% of the population speaks only Guaraní, in which the majority are poor). 

Democratic Transition:  The military coup on 3 February 1989 opened the doors towards a long road leading towards the construction of democracy by the citizens.  In the past, the institutional political life had never been taken into account democracy.  This challenge mainly implied an effort to build and restore a human relations model, based on respect and the confrontation of ideas and thoughts from institutional public entities, starting with the recognition of public liberties.  Recent history shows more favorable facts.  With the 2003 elections, a new government was installed; one that has been able to improve economic dynamics and has began processing certain unavoidable structural reforms.  Nonetheless, citizenship insecurity has increased and corruption has not diminished as expected.  In any case, the country continues without an “alternative model”, different from the traditional, that points to the principle problems that have affected the country for decades.

Youth:  Paraguay is a country with an incredibly large youth population, one in four persons are between 15 and 29 years of age, and 40% of the populations are younger than 15 years of age. 66.3% of the population is under 30.  The majority of these youths are unmarried, a little more than half of them live with their parents, and the language commonly spoken in the rural area is Guarani and in urban areas Spanish.  Internal migration is generally among young people with 40% of the migrating population between the ages of 15 and 19 in the last five years.  The main reasons for this movement are the search for employment and the continuation of education. 

Education:  4.5% of youths are illiterate. However,  the majority of them are in rural areas and live below the poverty line.  On average, youths have a little more than eight years of education, which is the equivalent to the eighth grade in primary education or passing the second year in secondary school.  A significant percentage of youths, 66%, do not attend any formal teaching institution and the tendency is that the numbers will continue to increase as they become older.  33% of youth study, but of this group only half, 17.7%, are exclusively dedicated to their studies and the rest combine it with work.

Employment: Youths are active participants in the work force, where participation by males (80.3%) is greater than that of females (50.1%), while there is little difference in the rates of occupation between the sexes (89.3% vs. 84.6%). The unemployment in the country is primarily among young people, affecting more the women and the poor, in both urban and rural areas. The under-utilization of juvenile labor affects almost a quarter of the EAP young Paraguayans, greater among poor men than women in urban areas.

Health: The majority of the youth population (83.2%) do not have medical insurance. The population with medical insurance is greater in the cities (24.4%) than in the countryside (6.2%). The percentage of women insured is greater than men and medical insurance is almost non-existent among the poor. The percentage of women between the ages of 15 and 29 years who have had two or more pregnancies is greater in the rural area and among the poor. The majority of women between the ages of 25 and 29 years who live in the rural area have had at least one pregnancy. The proportion of young women between the ages of 15 and 19 years who have been pregnant is also significant (12.7%).

 Participation: Only 10% of the juvenile population is associated with an organization or association. Participation is much higher in urban areas (12%) than rural areas (8%). Participation is about the same among males and females (10.9% and 9.9%, respectively). The proportion of youths linked in some way to an organization or association is less among those considered poor, 7.6% compared to 11.4% of those who are not poor. In both urban and rural areas, the percentage of participation is less among the poor than those who are not.

Read more information about this country in Spanish