Ho Chi Minh City was the most populous locality in Vietnam with a permanent population of nearly nine million as of April 1, 2019, according to the results of the latest population and housing census announced on Friday.

Vo Thanh Sang, deputy director of the municipal statistics office, told a conference on Friday the city’s population has grown by 1.8 million people from the 2009 figure.

Over 79 percent of the population lived in urban areas, as opposed to nearly 21 percent who lived in rural areas, Sang said.

Males and females made up 48.7 percent and 51.3 percent of the population, respectively. Over 59 percent of the population was married.

The city’s average population growth rate hit 2.28 percent annually between 2009 and 2019.

Of Ho Chi Minh City’s 24 districts, Tan Binh recorded the largest population of 784,000 people, while Can Gio housed the smallest population of nearly 72,000 residents.

The city’s per capita housing area stood at 19.4 square metres. Up to 99.3 percent of the city’s 2.5 million families had a stable home as of April.

The average number of members in a household in the southern metropolis was 3.51 persons and decreasing. Over 66 percent of households reported having between two and four members.

The population and housing census, conducted once every ten years, looked into the general situation of the population, migration status, academic attainment levels, residency and people’s basic living conditions.

Ho Chi Minh City was the first city or province in Vietnam to comprehensively incorporate information technology into collecting data for the census.

Residents were interviewed through a computer-assisted personal interviewing (CAPI) system and online surveys.

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