The Population Count, which has been conducted in 5,435 municipalities¹, shows Brazil has a total of 11,422 elderly persons aged 100 years or over. Among these, there are 7,950 women and 3,472 men. Considering the 20 municipalities counted by IBGE which held the biggest number of elderly aged over 100, the highlights were the capitals São Luis (144), Natal (118), Maceió (93 and Manaus (89).  

The Count also revealed that, among the overall number of women dwelling in the municipalities counted, 19.70% were heads of the household,;30.35% were partners of different sex; 30.01% were daughters or stepdaughters and 11.14%, other relatives. Among men, 36.59% were heads of the household; 43.60%, sons or stepsons and 10.27%, other relatives. For the first time the survey also considered same-sex partners: 0.02% of the men and 0.01% of the women in the households counted belonged to this group, which corresponds to an overall figure of 17 thousand couples.

In the last seven years, the Brazilian population grew at an annual rate of 1.21%. In 2000, there were 169,799,170 million inhabitants; in 2007, this figure reached 183,987,291 million. The highest rates were those in the Central West and North Regions, especially in the state of Amapá (3.17% a year). The lowest percentage of growth per year occurred in the South (0.95%). In fact, Rio Grande do Sul featured as the area with the lowest index among all the other states (0.57%). Considering municipalities, 2,601 had a population below 10 thousand inhabitants, concentrated in the South, Southeast and Northeast Regions. Municipalities with up to 20 thousand inhabitants (4,004) represented 72.0% of the overall number of municipalities in the country; those with over 100 thousand inhabitants totaled 253. Only 14 municipalities had more than one million inhabitants.

There was also change of the proportion of men to women in the country. In 2000², the number of persons of both sexes was virtually the same, that is, there were 100 women for each 100 men. In 2007, this proportion has fallen to 99.6 men for each 100 women. Among the states, Pará was the highlight with the highest proportion: 107.3 men for each 100 women. He opposite occurred in Paraíba, which has 94.6 men for each 100 women. Ceará, São Paulo and Minas Gerais are the states in which the proportion of  men to women was most evenly balanced.

Average number of dwellers per household falls 

The average number of dwellers per household has also fallen, being affected by the decrease of the fertility rate and by the reduction of family size. In 2007 there were 77 municipalities with an average of dwellers per municipality below 3.0; this figure increased to 250 municipalities in 2007. On the other hand, the 250 municipalities whose average was of over 4.5 dwellers per household fell to 181 in the current Count results.

The proportion of occupied private households also had overall increase, having changed from 73.3% in Rio de Janeiro, to 90.6% in Acre. From 2000 to 2007, only Paraná (85.15 to 79.5%) and Piauí (from 83.9% to 83.2%) faced decrease of the number of occupied private households. Among the households for occasional use, the highest proportion was that of Rio de Janeiro (16.1%), given the characteristics of municipalities belonging to this state, in which the participation of municipalities of the shore and mountains were the most relevant ones. The urbanization rate of the municipalities counted increased from 70.0%,  in 2000, to 73.6%, in 2007. The rate of Amapá the rate was the highest among those of the Federative Units: 89.8%, followed by São Paulo (89.6%) and Rio de Janeiro (87.6%).

The Population Count, which started on April 16, covered 5,435 municipalities with up to 170 thousand inhabitants, corresponding to 97% of the Brazilian municipalities and a to total of 108.7 million persons investigated. This number was equivalent to 60% of the estimated population, living in 30 million households (57% of the households in the country). The main technological innovation of Censuses 2007 was the use of 82 thousand handheld computers (PDA’s), which replaced the traditional paper questionnaires. This operation involved over 90 thousand persons all over the country. The PDA’s, equipped with GPS appliances, informed the exact location of census takers in the collecting areas (census sectors). There were several advantages, especially concerning the duration of interviews, the processing of the information collected and the transmission of the results obtained to society.

¹ In municipalities with up to 170 inhabitants and in 21 other ones, located in states where only one or two municipalities exceeded this number of inhabitants.

² In order to facilitate comparison, the 129 municipalities with over 170 thousand inhabitants which were not included in the Population Count 2007 were also excluded from Census 2000.