Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland could boast 9,740 people with a fortune greater than CHF10 million in 2007, the latest year for which final figures are available, new statistics issued Thursday show. The number was nearly 1,000 greater than a year earlier, but it will be October 2011 before we see how many of them held onto their wealth once the global economic crisis was underway in 2008. Zurich is home to the largest number of multimillionaires.
The rest of Switzerland lives on considerably less, with more than half of the population declaring a fortune of less than CHF50,000 to the government. Fully one-quarter of the population declared that it had no income at all.
Unemployment hits foreigners harder than Swiss
Streets of Zurich: 22.2% of residents in Switzerland are foreigners
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The rate of growth of resident foreigners as part of the Swiss population is picking up, with a 2.2 percent increase in 2009, new federal statistics show. Germany and Italy lead with the way, with European Union citizens accounting for two-thirds of the increase. Switzerland at 31 Dcember 2009 had 1,802,300 resident foreigners, not including diplomatic and international organization employees.
Switzerland has the highest percentage of foreigners in Europe, after tiny Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, 22.9 percent of the population and one in four workers.
Long-term residents
Nearly 21 percent of resident foreigners were born in Switzerland and nearly 40 percent of those born abroad have lived in the country for at least 15 years and 15 percent have been in Switzerland for at least 30 years.
Asylum-seekers a small percentage
Only 2.2 percent of the resident foreign population, some 40,000 people were in the process of consideration for asylum, with another 1.1 percent having recently demanded asylum.
Higher unemployment, lower wages for foreigners
The definitive figures for 2009, published by the Swiss statistics office Thursday 23 September show several changes in the foreign population, as well as some marked differences between resident foreigners and the Swiss.
But 1,000 women die a day: numbers must fall further, say UN agencies
Maternal health care, Sierre Leone (photo: UN / H Bigur)
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Maternal deaths are falling worldwide, down by 34 percent since 1990, shows a new multi- agency report published 15 September. Some 358,000 women died during or from complications related to childbirth in 2008, down from 546,000 18 years earlier.
The fall is commendable, notes the World Health Organization (WHO), which is one of the author agencies, but the rate of decline is less than half of that needed to meet the Millennium Development Goal of a 75 percent reduction in maternal deaths between 1990 and 2015.
The report was published jointly by WHO, the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef), the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) and the World Bank.
Pregnant women still die from four major causes, according to the report: severe bleeding after childbirth, infections, hypertensive disorders, and unsafe abortions. About 1,000 women died due to these complications every day in 2008. Of these, 570 lived in sub-Saharan Africa, 300 in South Asia and five in high-income countries.
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Producers’ prices and import prices in Switzerland fell by 0.4 percent in June, the first decline in four months. Year-to-year, prices were nevertheless 0.9 percent higher at the end of June. Lower prices for petrol and metal accounted for the fall registered by Switzerland’s statistical office.
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – A second young man has drowned this week, a 20-year-old, Thursday afternoon 9 July, at the Hauterive port in Neuchatel. He was with a friend, who immediately raised the alert but by the time emergency services arrived it was too late to save the youth, who was from Gampelen in canton Bern.
His is the second accidental death by drowning this week. Monday, Daniel Cho, a cellist with the Regina Spektor band, in town to perform at the Montreux Jazz Festival, died after taking a swim with a friend near the Chateau de Chillon.
The Swiss Safety Council warned at the start of summer that young men are statistically more at risk of drowning than the rest of the population. Forty-six people die from drowning, on average, every year in Switzerland.
Changes to immigration
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland made several changes in its approach to immigration in 2009, putting an emphasis on better integration of foreigners, including language requirements for citizenship. Now a new report published by the federal government highlights the role foreigners and immigrants play in Swiss society. It includes figures for the end of 2009.
In an unrelated study, a professor at the University of Lausanne and her team of researchers developed a programme that teaches multiple lifestyle changes to predominantly migrant preschoolers and their parents in Switzerland, part of broader efforts to improve integration.
The programme, funded in part by Health Promotion Switzerland and the Swiss National Science Foundation, is called “Ballabeina”, which means seesaw in Rhaeto-Romanic, a Latin language spoken in parts of Ticino and Graubuenden. Professor Jardena Pudery says, “The name stands for a life in motion but also in balance.” The programme helps the children reduce body fat and improve fitness.
Two million people out of a Swiss population of just over seven million have immigrated to Switzerland or are direct descendents of immigrants since the second world war. One in four people in the country’s working population holds a foreign passport.
Foreign nationals account for 21 percent of the total population, one of the highest rates in Europe. And immigrants contribute more to demographic growth in Switzerland than in countries traditionally known as immigrant nations, such as the US, Canada and Australia.
One in 10 Swiss citizens resides abroad.
Figures for the end of 2009 show:
Traffic jam on the A9 above Vevey
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch.com) – Use of transport by individuals has doubled in Switzerland from 1970 to 2008, but growing use of transport for merchandise shows an even more dramatic change, tripling in 30 years. The figures are part of a new statistical study of shifts in transport use in Switzerland, released Monday 21 June by the Swiss federal government. More complete statistics on transport will be compiled partly as a result of the impact on the economy of the Iceland volcanic eruption earlier this year.
The study shows that of the 5.4 million motor vehicles registered in Switzerland in 2009, 4 million are private cars.
And while greater use of transport provides several benefits to the economy, it comes at a price:
one-third of energy consumption in Switzerland and 37 percent of CO2 comes from transport
nearly 21,000 road accidents in 2008 caused injuries to people
the total cost of road traffic in 2005 (most recent year figures are available) was CHF70.5 billion, and rail traffic total costs that year were CHF11.4 billion.
Road safety tests, Switzerland
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Statistics published by canton Geneva Tuesday 23 March show that road accidents have been falling steadily in the past five years, with improvements in virtually all categories measured (inattention, speed, road conditions, and more).
The figures provide some details behind the averages. The worst day of the week for accidents is Friday and the time of day with the most accidents is between 17:00 and 18:00.
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Switzerland has for the first time produced nationwide crime statistics that will in future allow for true comparisons between areas. Top of the list of crimes committed: theft and property damage, which together make up 82 percent of all crimes, with car theft more than one-third of these.
Swiss police registered 675,309 crimes in 2009.
Domestic violence: one-third of violent crimes; foreigners commit one-third of all crimes
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – Houses are being burgled at a far higher rate than usual in Geneva, police have told the Tribune de Geneve: some 800 cases in January and 30 a day in February, the highest rate since 2000. The Tribune points out that Switzerland is easier on robbers, particularly in cases of simple (unarmed) robbery, than are neighbouring countries. A person found guilty of breaking and entering in Geneva will generally receive a sentence of a few days in jail while in France a repeat offender will be sent to prison.
Canton Vaud, which publishes a map of break-ins every Monday, has remained stable with about 60-70 home robberies a week, although this rose to nearly double around the Christmas holidays.
Zurich, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The exceedingly turbulent 2009 is a year many airlines will be happy to forget, with traffic down and finances in dismal shape, but Swiss ended the year with small increases in passenger traffic, and the number of flights also rose slightly.December proved to be a relatively good month, with 6.7 percent more passengers than in December 2008, and seat load factor climbed from 76.3 percent to 81.0 percent.
The airline carried 13.8 million passengers last year, a 2.4 percent increase on
the 13.5 million carried in 2008. Swiss operated 136 536 flights in 2009, an increase of 1.6 percent over the previous year.
Foreigners’ injuries falling, as part of whole for Swiss winter sports, avalanches biggest killers
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Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Foreign tourists are gradually becoming a smaller group among the total of those injured in winter sports in Switzerland, new statistics show.
BPA, the Swiss safety board, Monday 11 January issued its annual detailed statistics for non-work accidents: at home, doing sports, on the road.
Foreigners accounted for 40 percent of ski accident injuries, 18 percent of snowboard ones and 27 percent of injuries from other winter sports (average: 32 percent).
By comparison, the figures for 2003 were: 47, 29, 28 (average: 40 percent).
Foreigners accounted for 19 of the 39 deaths from winter sports in 2007, the most recent year noted, up from an average of 15 out of 40 deaths a year recorded for the five years from 2003 to 2007.
Knees for skiers, shoulders for snowboarders
Knees remain the most vulnerable body part for ski injuries, while shoulders and the upper arms are for snowboarders.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Switzerland registered 2,567 cases of dogs biting humans in 2008, a number that was very close to that for 2007, records published 15 October show. More than 200 varieties of dogs were involved in the incidents. Children are more frequently targets than adults and have the most serious injuries because dogs tend to bite them on the head and neck. CHildren were attacked in the dog’s home in 43 percent of cases and in public areas in 51 percent of cases. Doctors, veterinarians and cantonal officials have been obliged to report dog biting incidents since 2006.
Only 80 cals, and cheaper by far than the multi-calorie restaurant iced coffees!
Geneva, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) -While Swiss over 50 years are likely to grab a yoghurt for a between-meal snack, in Britain an iced coffee from one of the high-street café shops can contain the calorie content of the evening meal. Older Swiss look for freshness and taste when they snack, according to a survey released by Agroscope Liebefeld-Posieux Research Station ALP (Swiss federal agricultural research centre). Top of the list of preferred snacks is fresh fruit, followed by milk products, such as fresh or flavoured milk, and plain or flavoured yoghurt.
The survey targeted people over 50 years, the fastest-growing segment of the population. Life-expectancy has been increasing since the middle of the 20th century, according to the Swiss Federal Statistics Office SFSO.
Bern, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Forty people lost their lives in accidents in 2008 that were linked to public transport: three of them in buses, one in a tram accident and the other 36 in accidents that involved “unauthorized” crossings or inattention at crossings of trains and trams. Switzerland has one of the world’s lowest rates of accidents linked to public transport systems, but the government, in its annual report on public transport safety, notes that more needs to be done to protect crossings.
The figures show a 33 percent increase over 2007 figures, but Bern notes that 2008 figures were lower than those for every year since 2001 except 2007.
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The number of abortions in Switzerland is still low by international comparison. Women in Switzerland had 10,848 abortions in 2008, a rate of 6.9 interventions per 1,000 women of child-bearing age, or 141 per 1,000 live births. By comparison, in France the figure was 17.2 per 1,000 women, in Italy 10.6 and in Germany 7.1.
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - Retails sales fell sharply in March, down 6.6 percent compared to March 2008. The first quarter of 2009 show a 1.2 percent drop compared to the first three months of 2008.
Neuchatel, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) – The number of hours worked in Switzerland inched up from 2006 to 2007 by 13 minutes a year, according to federal figures released today, meaning that by 2007 the work week was an hour longer. In reality, fulltime employees put in 14 fewer hours in 2007 than in 2006 because their hours absent from work also rose.
