Demographics of the Philippines


Demographic features of the Philippines include population density, ethnicity, education level, health of the populace, economic status, religious affiliations, and other aspects of the population. The Philippines annualized population growth rate between the years 2020 and 2024 was 0.80%. According to the 2024 census, the population of the Philippines is 112,729,484. The first census in the Philippines was held in the year 1591 which counted 667,612 people.
The majority of Filipinos are lowland Austronesians, while the Aetas, as well as other highland groups form a minority. The indigenous population is related to the indigenous populations of the Malay Archipelago. Some ethnic groups that have been in the Philippines for centuries before Spanish and American colonial rule have assimilated or intermixed. This is the case with the Sama-Bajau ethnicity which possess Austroasiatic ancestry and the Blaan people who possess Papuan ancestry, while ancient immigration integrated some Indian ancestry to the precolonial Indianized kingdoms in the islands. Meanwhile, Spanish era censuses from the 1700s, record that 2.33% of the population were Mexicans and 5% were mixed Spanish-Filipinos or pure Spanish-Filipinos. Records from the Philippine government shows that pure Chinese were 1.35 million and mixed Chinese-Filipinos composed about 20% of the population. Up to 750,000 people from the United States of America also live in the Philippines. They represent 0.75% of the total population, while an additional 250,000 about 0.25% of Filipinos are Amerasians of half Filipino and half American descent. Thus making the percentage of the population having either full or partial American descent amount to 1% of the Philippines' demographics. Other ethnic groups include the Arabs who intermixed with Muslim Filipinos and the Japanese who form parts of the population.
The most commonly spoken indigenous languages are Tagalog and Cebuano, with 23.8 million and 16 million speakers, respectively. Nine other indigenous languages have at least one million native speakers: Ilocano, Hiligaynon, Waray, Bicolano, Kapampangan, Pangasinan, Maranao, Maguindanao, and Tausug. One or more of these are spoken as a mother tongue by more than 93% of the population. Filipino and English are the official languages, but there are between 120 and 170 distinct indigenous Philippine languages.

Population history

The first census in the Philippines was in 1591, based on books collected. The books counted the total founding population of the Spanish-Philippines as 667,612 people. 20,000 were Chinese migrant traders, at different times: around 15,600 individuals were Latino soldier-colonists who were cumulatively sent from Peru and Mexico and they were shipped to the Philippines annually, 3,000 were Japanese residents, and 600 were pure Spaniards from Europe. There was a large but unknown number of South Asian Filipinos, as the majority of the slaves imported into the archipelago were from Bengal and India, adding Dravidian and Indo-Aryan speaking South Indians and Indo-European speaking Bengalis into the ethnic mix.
The rest were Austronesians and Negritos. With 667,612 people, during this era, the Philippines was among the most sparsely populated lands in Asia. In contrast, Japan during that era had a population of 8 million and Mexico had a population of 4 million, which was huge compared to the Philippine's 600,000. In 1600, the method of population counting was revamped by the Spanish officials, who then based the counting of the population through church records.
Stephanie J. Mawson, by rummaging through records in the archives of Mexico discovered that the Spaniards were not the only immigrant group to the Philippines; Peru and Mexico too sent soldiers to the islands, and in fact outnumbered the Spaniards who immigrated to the Philippines.
Location16031636164216441654165516701672
Manila900446—407821799708667
Fort Santiago—22——50—8681
Cavite—70——89—225211
Cagayan4680————155155
Calamianes——————7373
Caraga—45————8181
Cebu8650————135135
Formosa—180——————
Moluccas80480507—389———
Otón6650————169169
Zamboanga—210——184———
Other255———————
Total reinforcements1,5331,6332,0672,085n/an/a1,6321,572

In 1798, the population of Luzon or Luconia was estimated to be around 600,000 with the other islands, unknown. 200,000 of the 600,000 population were of mixed-raced descent of either Spanish, Chinese or Latin-American admixture. 5,000 enlisted soldiers on that year, were of South American descent, while 2,500 were pure Spanish officers. There were 20,000 new Chinese immigrants. The book, "Intercolonial Intimacies Relinking Latin/o America to the Philippines, 1898–1964 By Paula C. Park" citing "Forzados y reclutas: los criollos novohispanos en Asia " gave a higher number of later Mexican soldier-immigrants to the Philippines, pegging the number at 35,000 immigrants in the 1700s in a population of only 1.5 million, thus forming 2.33% of the population.
In 1799, Friar Manuel Buzeta estimated the population of all the Philippine islands as 1,502,574. Despite the number of Mixed Spanish-Filipino descent being the lowest, they may be more common than expected as many Spaniards often had Filipino concubines and mistresses and they frequently produced children out of wedlock.
In the late 1700s to early 1800s, Joaquín Martínez de Zúñiga, an Agustinian Friar from Spain, in his Two Volume Book: "Estadismo de las islas Filipinas" compiled a census of the Spanish-Philippines based on the tribute counts and came upon the following statistics:
ProvinceNative TributesSpanish Mestizo TributesAll Tributes
Tondo14,437-1/23,52827,897-7
Cavite5,724-1/28599,132-4
Laguna14,392-1/233619,448-6
Batangas15,01445121,579-7
Mindoro3,1653-1/24,000-8
Bulacan16,586-1/22,00725,760-5
Pampanga16,604-1/22,64127,358-1
Bataan3,0826195,433
Zambales1,136734,389
Ilocos44,852-1/263168,856
Pangasinan19,836719-1/225,366
Cagayan9,888011,244-6
Camarines19,686-1/2154-1/224,994
Albay12,33914616,093
Tayabas7,396129,228
Cebu28,112-1/262528,863
Samar3,0421034,060
Leyte7,67837-1/210,011
Caraga3,49704,977
Misamis1,27801,674
Negros Island5,74107,176
Iloilo29,72316637,760
Capiz11,4598914,867
Antique9,228011,620
Calamianes2,28903,161
TOTAL299,04913,201 424,992-16

The Spanish-Filipino population as a proportion of the provinces widely varied; with as high as 19% of the population of Tondo province , to Pampanga 13.7%, Cavite at 13%, Laguna 2.28%, Batangas 3%, Bulacan 10.79%, Bataan 16.72%, Ilocos 1.38%, Pangasinan 3.49%, Albay 1.16%, Cebu 2.17%, Samar 3.27%,
Iloilo 1%, Capiz 1%, Bicol 20%, and Zamboanga 40%. According to the data, in the Archdiocese of Manila which administers much of Luzon under it, about 10% of the population was Spanish-Filipino. Summing up all the provinces including those with no Spanish Filipinos, all in all, in the total population of the Philippines, Spanish Filipinos and mixed Spanish-Filipinos composed 5% of the population.
Meanwhile, government records show that 20% of the Philippines' total population were either pure Chinese or Mixed Chinese-Filipinos.
The first official census was in 1878, when the population as of midnight on December 31, 1877, was counted. This was followed by the 1887 census, with the 1898 census not completed. The 1887 census yielded a count of 5,984,727 excluding non-Christians.
In the 1860s to 1890s, in the urban areas of the Philippines, especially at Manila, according to burial statistics, as much as 3.3% of the population were pure European Spaniards and the pure Chinese were as high as 9.9%. The Spanish-Filipino and Chinese-Filipino mestizo populations may have fluctuated. Eventually, everybody belonging to these non-native categories diminished because they were assimilated into and chose to self-identify as pure Filipinos. Since during the Philippine Revolution, the term "Filipino" included anybody born in the Philippines coming from any race. That would explain the abrupt drop of otherwise high Chinese, Spanish and mestizo percentages across the country by the time of the first American census in 1903.