Total Population
Population by Religion and Ethnicity. Thousand persons, irregular.
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Data source: Department of Census and Statistics, Population by Religion and Ethnicity (31 Aug 2026)
Macro Lab · LK.POP.CENSUS_HISTORY.TOTAL_POPULATION.I · CC BY 4.0
About this series
- Source Department of Census and Statistics, compiled by Macro Lab
- Unit Thousand persons
- Date range 1 Jan 1881 – 1 Jan 2024
- Last checked 31 Aug 2026
Checks: no discrepancies recorded. Compiled by Department of Census and Statistics, read from the Central Bank of Sri Lanka.
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Details
- Name in the warehouse
- Population by Religion and Ethnicity: Total Population
- Read from
- CBSL Economic and Social Statistics (Central Bank of Sri Lanka)
- Source page
- https://www.cbsl.gov.lk/en/statistics/economic-and-social-statistics-of-sri-lanka
- Notes
- CBSL Economic and Social Statistics, table 3.18. Compiled by DCS. National population by religion and ethnicity, one row per census from 1881 to 2024 (not evenly spaced: a 20-year gap 1981-2001, the rest roughly decennial). Department of Census and Statistics. freq "I". Sri Lankan Tamil and Indian Tamil are not split before the 1911 census; those years' "Ethnicity - Sri Lankan Tamil (%)" holds the two groups combined (the source merges the cells) and "Ethnicity - Indian Tamil (%)" has no value for them, not a zero. A few early "Other" religion/ethnicity cells print as "..." rather than a number; read as 0.0, the same as the ellipsis character the table's own footnote defines as "Negligible" elsewhere in the same column - a source convention, not a fix.
Source documents
Vintages
One vintage so far, published 31 Aug 2026. Revisions show here once a later release changes a value.