15% of the population of Sulaymaniyah is rural, and 85% lives in cities, according to the Statistics Directorate of the KRG Ministry of Planning in the province.

Director Shwan Jabar told Channel8 that 85% of the population of Sulaymaniyah are urban and 15% are rural, while in the 1970s, 75% of the population were rural and 25% were urban.

Factors Driving Rural-to-Urban Migration

Jabar noted that there have been many reasons for migration from rural areas to cities in the past 50 years, including technological advances, efforts to improve welfare, shortages of local products, labor scarcity, and declining family size.

"One of the main reasons for the evacuation of some villages is the lack of basic services such as roads, schools, and health centers," he said.

Kurdistan Region Demographics Detailed in Latest Census

According to the census results conducted on November 20, 2024, aiming to assess population, unemployment, and poverty rates, Iraq’s population stands at 45 million, 407 thousand, while the population of the Kurdistan Region is 6 million, 370 thousand.

The number of families in the region has reached 1,379,163, with an average household size of 4.6 people.

In terms of gender distribution, the census recorded 3,200,506 males and 3,170,162 females across the Kurdistan Region.