Most of the people who settled in Kuwait in the early eighteenth century came from central Arabia. Other people came from other Arab regions and from the non-Arab country of Iran. Kuwait's population reached thirty-five thousand by the early
Twentieth century and almost doubled by 1946, when Kuwait exported its first commercial oil.
Economic growth and prosperity from Kuwait's oil revenues attracted a large number of laborers from surrounding countries. By the time of the first official census in 1957, the Kuwaiti population had reached 206,473. By 1965 non-Kuwaitis outnumbered native Kuwaitis. Fearing this trend, the government established a law that granted citizenship only to those whose families had lived in Kuwait prior to 1920. This law, however, did not stop other immigrants from coming to Kuwait. By the time of the Iraqi invasion in 1990, more than 2 million people lived in Kuwait. Almost two-thirds of them were expatriates.
Prior to the Gulf War the largest non-Kuwaiti group was Palestinians. Their number reached over 400,000 by 1990. There were also a large number of immigrants from other Middle Eastern countries such as Egypt, Yemen, Iran, and from South and Southeast Asian countries. Expatriates occupied most of the professional and managerial jobs in the country.
Most Kuwaitis make their living from nonagricultural activities, and about 96 percent of them live in the cities. Kuwait's capital, Kuwait City, had a population of 500,000 by the late 1990's.
The 1990 invasion of Kuwait by the Iraqi military forced more than one-half of the Kuwaiti population out of the country. After the Iraqi expulsion, many immigrants were not allowed to return, especially those of Palestinian, Jordanian, and Yemeni origin, some of whom had supported Hussein during the Iraqi invasion. By 1997 Kuwait's population was 1.8 million, a figure below the prewar numbers. Less than 45 percent were citizens.
Although the population finally passed prewar figures in the early twenty-first century, reaching an estimated 2.1 million in 2002, noncitizens continued to be a large proportion of residents of Kuwait.
The Kuwaiti government has provided Kuwaitis with one of the best and most developed health services in the world. Access to education from kindergarten to college, and even to scholarships abroad, is available to Kuwaitis. Housing is usually affordable, and there are no homeless Kuwaitis. While Kuwaiti women have been given more rights as a result of reforms after
The Persian Gulf War, overall participation by women in decisionmaking processes is still limited.
World History
