Bagnes - Demographics

Demographics

Bagnes has a population (as of December 2011) of 7,807. As of 2008, 26.3% of the population are resident foreign nationals. Over the last 10 years (1999–2009 ) the population has changed at a rate of 24.3%. It has changed at a rate of 29.3% due to migration and at a rate of 2.7% due to births and deaths.

Most of the population (as of 2000) speaks French (5,714 or 87.4%) as their first language, Portuguese is the second most common (246 or 3.8%) and English is the third (178 or 2.7%). There are 139 people who speak German, 99 people who speak Italian and 2 people who speak Romansh.

As of 2008, the gender distribution of the population was 51.5% male and 48.5% female. The population was made up of 2,750 Swiss men (36.1% of the population) and 1,169 (15.3%) non-Swiss men. There were 2,769 Swiss women (36.4%) and 929 (12.2%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality 3,508 or about 53.7% were born in Bagnes and lived there in 2000. There were 744 or 11.4% who were born in the same canton, while 694 or 10.6% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 1,422 or 21.8% were born outside of Switzerland.

The age distribution of the population (as of 2000) is children and teenagers (0–19 years old) make up 22.2% of the population, while adults (20–64 years old) make up 62.3% and seniors (over 64 years old) make up 15.5%.

As of 2000, there were 2,864 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 3,019 married individuals, 398 widows or widowers and 255 individuals who are divorced.

As of 2000 the average number of residents per living room was 0.62 which is about equal to the cantonal average of 0.63 per room. In this case, a room is defined as space of a housing unit of at least 4 m² (43 sq ft) as normal bedrooms, dining rooms, living rooms, kitchens and habitable cellars and attics. About 77.8% of the total households were owner occupied, or in other words did not pay rent (though they may have a mortgage or a rent-to-own agreement).

As of 2000, there were 2,469 private households in the municipality, and an average of 2.4 persons per household. There were 831 households that consist of only one person and 204 households with five or more people. Out of a total of 2,631 households that answered this question, 31.6% were households made up of just one person and there were 29 adults who lived with their parents. Of the rest of the households, there are 554 married couples without children, 836 married couples with children There were 163 single parents with a child or children. There were 56 households that were made up of unrelated people and 162 households that were made up of some sort of institution or another collective housing.

In 2000 there were 2,045 single family homes (or 62.8% of the total) out of a total of 3,258 inhabited buildings. There were 845 multi-family buildings (25.9%), along with 185 multi-purpose buildings that were mostly used for housing (5.7%) and 183 other use buildings (commercial or industrial) that also had some housing (5.6%).

In 2000, a total of 2,331 apartments (32.3% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 4,690 apartments (65.1%) were seasonally occupied and 187 apartments (2.6%) were empty. As of 2009, the construction rate of new housing units was 3.7 new units per 1000 residents. The vacancy rate for the municipality, in 2010, was 0.98%.

The historical population is given in the following chart: