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Argentina
Region: South America
Population (2006)1: 40,677,348 Land Area2: 1,056,642 Life Expectancy3: 74.5 Per capita income3: 12,106 |
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Indexes4
Largest Religious Groups
History
In 1816, the United Provinces of the Rio Plata declared their independence from Spain. Eventually, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay went their own way, but the area that remained became Argentina. The country's population and culture were subsequently heavily shaped by immigrants from throughout Europe, but most particularly Italy and Spain, which provided the largest percentage of newcomers from 1860 to 1930. Up until about the mid-20th century, much of Argentina's history was dominated by periods of internal political conflict between Federalists and Unitarians and between civilian and military factions. After World War II, an era of Peronist authoritarian rule and interference in subsequent governments was followed by a military junta that took power in 1976. Democracy returned in 1983, and has persisted despite numerous challenges, the most formidable of which was a severe economic crisis in 2001-02 that led to violent public protests and the resignation of several interim presidents. The economy has recovered strongly since bottoming out in 2002. The government renegotiated its public debt in 2005 and paid off its remaining obligations to the IMF in early 2006.
Sources
Note: All country profiles, maps, and flags are taken from The World Factbook, 2005.
1. The U.S. Census Bureau's International Data Base (IDB) is a computerized data bank containing statistical tables of demographic data for 228 countries and areas of the world.
2. The U.S. State Department's International Religious Freedom report is submitted to Congress annually by the Department of State in compliance with Section 102(b) of the International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA) of 1998. This report supplements the most recent Human Rights Reports by providing additional detailed information with respect to matters involving international religious freedom. It includes individual country chapters on the status of religious freedom worldwide. A dataset with these and the other international measures highlighted on the country pages can be downloaded from this website. These State Department reports are open source.
3. The United Nations Human Development Reports provide data and statistical analysis in various areas of human development. The Human Development Report (HDR) presents two types of statistics: the human development indicator tables, which provide a global assessment of country achievements in different areas of human development, and thematic statistical analysis. A dataset with these and the other international measures highlighted on the country pages can be downloaded from this website. Used with permission.
4. The article by Brian Grim and Roger Finke describes the coding of the U.S. State Department's International Religious Freedom reports. This variable was coded from the reports for 2005. Under their supervision, additional years of the reports are currently being coded by researchers at the Association of Religion Data Archives. Smaller countries not covered by the State Department Reports were coded by researchers at the World Christian Database under the supervision of Todd Johnson, drawing on information from Oxford Press’s World Christian Encyclopedia. A dataset with these and the other international measures highlighted on the country pages can be downloaded from this website. Used with permission.
