Ramallah  - Some 2.35 million Palestinians currently live in the West Bank, the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) said Monday, basing the number on a census conducted in 2007.

This represents an increase from 1.87 million ten years ago when the first census was conducted, PCBS director Loai Shabaneh said in a statement

He said annual growth rate between the two census periods was 2.6 per cent, which means the Palestinian population in the West Bank will double after 27 years and not after 23 years, as was previously predicted. This is a direct result of a decline in fertility rate and of emigration, he added.

The number of persons per household has also dropped between 1997 and 2007, from 6.1 people per household to 5.5 people, which also indicates a decline in the fertility rate and a change in living style from the more traditional extended family to the nuclear family.

At the same time, while 45 per cent of the Palestinian society in the West Bank is defined as young - between the ages of 0 and 14 years, - this rate dropped to 41.3 per cent in 2007.

The PCBS attributed this decline to a drop in the overall fertility rate which it said had dropped from 5.6 births in 1997 to 4.6 births in 2007.

It said that the illiteracy rate for people 10 years and older dropped from 11.8 per cent in 1997 to 5.8 per cent in 2007.

The number of Palestinians in the West Bank listed as refugees, and their families, increased from 26.6 per cent in 1997 to 28.1 per cent in 2007, indicating a rise in the fertility rate among refugees, or a decline in migration, said the PCBS.

The employment rate dropped from 37.7 per cent in 1997 to 33.6 per cent in 2007 reflecting the difficult economic conditions the Palestinian areas have been facing in the last decade, the PCBS said. (dpa)