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Belgium
Region: Western Europe
Population (2006)1: 10,403,951 Land Area2: 12,566 Life Expectancy3: 78.9 Per capita income3: 28,335 |
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Indexes4
Largest Religious Groups
History
Belgium became independent from the Netherlands in 1830; it was occupied by Germany during World Wars I and II. It has prospered in the past half century as a modern, technologically advanced European state and member of NATO and the EU. Tensions between the Dutch-speaking Flemings of the north and the French-speaking Walloons of the south have led in recent years to constitutional amendments granting these regions formal recognition and autonomy.
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.
