ECONOMIC PROFILE OF SWITZERLAND Introduction

Profile of Switzerland: Topics and Data

To accommodate the wide range of information included in this economic profile, topics are addressed in outline form, as opposed to structuring the information into an essay. These topics, together with the relevant data are as follows:

1. Demographics, geography, and social conditions. Switzerland is a country of more than 41,530 square kilometers of territory.1 Geographically, the country is located in the heart of the Alps in Central Europe. The Alps cover 60 percent of Switzerland's land area, and the Jura near France accounts for another 10 percent of the country's land area. The remaining 30 percent of the land area is located in the Midlands between the other two regions. Switzerland's population approximates seven million.2 The country's density is 169 persons per square kilometer. German is the language of 65 percent of the Swiss. An additional 18 percent speak French as a first language, while 12 percent speak Italian, onepercent speak Romanish, all four of which are official languages in Switzerland, and the remaining

1J. Paxton, (Ed.), The Statesman's Year Book 19921993, 130th ed. (London: St. Martins Press, 1992), 1157.

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58 percent Savings 30 percent Investment 31 percent Other 42 percent [source: The World Bank, 1992, 195] ================================================================= distribution of household consumption in Switzerland is summarized in Table 3, which may be found on the following page. The data presented in Table 3 indicate that the distribution of Swiss household consumption is quite similar to that in other Western European countries. Income distribution in Switzerland is generally similar to that in other Western European countries and the United States with the exceptions that (1) the income share for the highest 20 percent of the population in Switzerland (44.6 percent) is more comparable to that in the United States (41.9 percent) than to that in the other Western European countries (a range from 36 to 41 percent), and (2) the income share for the highest 10 percent of the population in Switzerland (29.8 percent) is even higher than that in the United States (25 percent), while the range in the other Western European countries is from 21.2 to 25.5 percent). The quin
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Approximate Word count = 1944
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)

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