This statistic shows the biggest cities in Costa Rica in 2020. In 2020, approximately 1.45 million people lived in San José , making it the biggest city in Costa Rica.

Costa Rica CR: Population in Largest City data was reported at 1,461,989.000 Person in 2023. This records an increase from the previous number of 1,441,324.000 Person for 2022. Costa Rica CR: Population in Largest City data is updated yearly, averaging 778,604.000 Person from Dec 1960 (Median) to 2023, with 64 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 1,461,989.000 Person in 2023 and a record low of 229,792.000 Person in 1960. Costa Rica CR: Population in Largest City data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Costa Rica – Table CR.World Bank.WDI: Population and Urbanization Statistics. Population in largest city is the urban population living in the country's largest metropolitan area.;United Nations, World Urbanization Prospects.;;

In 2022, San José and Alajuela were the most populated provinces in Costa Rica, with over a million inhabitants each. The Central American country has a high concentration of the population in the urban area known as Central Valley.

In 2023, the share of urban population in Costa Rica remained nearly unchanged at around 82.62 percent. Still, the share reached its highest value in the observed period in 2023. A country's urbanization rate refers to the share of the total population living in an urban setting. International comparisons of urbanization rates may be inconsistent, due to discrepancies between definitions of what constitutes an urban center (based on population size, area, or space between dwellings, among others).Find more key insights for the share of urban population in countries like Honduras and Belize.

In 2023, Costa Rica exported around 17.9 billion U.S. dollars' worth of goods worldwide. The United States led the list of destination countries for those Costa Rican exports, with an export value of more than 8.1 billion U.S. dollars. The Netherlands ranked second, having received Costa Rican goods worth around 1.5 billion U.S. dollars. Costa Rica's most exported products include medical equipment, as well as prosthetics and implants.

Data for Good Meta. High resolution population estimates for Costa Rica. Includes total population, men, women, women of reproductive age, elderly, youth, and children subgroups. Creative Commons Attribute International License.

To facilitate population data retrieval across scale, we segment spatial coverage into equal sized tiles. GPU enabled spatial join via RapidsAI was employed to assign population information with each vector tile.

Reference: Facebook Connectivity Lab and Center for International Earth Science Information Network - CIESIN - Columbia University. 2016. High Resolution Settlement Layer (HRSL). Source imagery for HRSL © 2016 DigitalGlobe. Accessed 7 April 2023.

最大城市人口占城市总人口的百分比在12-01-2023达34.658%，相较于12-01-2022的34.571%有所增长。最大城市人口占城市总人口的百分比数据按年更新，12-01-1960至12-01-2023期间平均值为46.729%，共64份观测结果。该数据的历史最高值出现于12-01-1963，达51.171%，而历史最低值则出现于12-01-2020，为34.420%。CEIC提供的最大城市人口占城市总人口的百分比数据处于定期更新的状态，数据来源于World Bank，数据归类于全球数据库的哥斯达黎加 – Table CR.World Bank.WDI: Population and Urbanization Statistics。

Of the cities who have experienced cost of living increases, the top three are located in Latin America, two in Mexico and one in Costa Rica. Each moved 38, 39, and 48 spots in the ranking respectively since 2022. Due to increases in interest rates, the Mexican peso and Costa Rican colón have both appreciated against the U.S. Dollar. Comparatively, Singapore and Zurich were ranked the most expensive cities in the world.

According to a study that surveyed startup companies based in Central America, San José, the capital of Costa Rica, had the startup ecosystem with the best score in terms of size, quality, and business climate. Overall, San José's startup ecosystem was rated with 0.74 points, of which 0.52 were awarded in the area of business environment. Panama City received the second best startup ecosystem score, at a total of 0.41 points.

Abstract

Polluted air is a major health hazard in developing countries. Improvements in pollution monitoring and statistical techniques during the last several decades have steadily enhanced the ability to measure the health effects of air pollution. Current methods can detect significant increases in the incidence of cardiopulmonary and respiratory diseases, coughing, bronchitis, and lung cancer, as well as premature deaths from these diseases resulting from elevated concentrations of ambient Particulate Matter (Holgate 1999).

Scarce public resources have limited the monitoring of atmospheric particulate matter (PM) concentrations in developing countries, despite their large potential health effects. As a result, policymakers in many developing countries remain uncertain about the exposure of their residents to PM air pollution. The Global Model of Ambient Particulates (GMAPS) is an attempt to bridge this information gap through an econometrically estimated model for predicting PM levels in world cities (Pandey et al. forthcoming).

The estimation model is based on the latest available monitored PM pollution data from the World Health Organization, supplemented by data from other reliable sources. The current model can be used to estimate PM levels in urban residential areas and non-residential pollution hotspots. The results of the model are used to project annual average ambient PM concentrations for residential and non-residential areas in 3,226 world cities with populations larger than 100,000, as well as national capitals.

The study finds wide, systematic variations in ambient PM concentrations, both across world cities and over time. PM concentrations have risen at a slower rate than total emissions. Overall emission levels have been rising, especially for poorer countries, at nearly 6 percent per year. PM concentrations have not increased by as much, due to improvements in technology and structural shifts in the world economy. Additionally, within-country variations in PM levels can diverge greatly (by a factor of 5 in some cases), because of the direct and indirect effects of geo-climatic factors.

The primary determinants of PM concentrations are the scale and composition of economic activity, population, the energy mix, the strength of local pollution regulation, and geographic and atmospheric conditions that affect pollutant dispersion in the atmosphere.

Geographic coverage

The database covers the following countries: Afghanistan Albania Algeria Andorra Angola
Antigua and Barbuda Argentina
Armenia Australia
Austria Azerbaijan
Bahamas, The
Bahrain Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus Belgium Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia Bosnia and Herzegovina
Brazil
Brunei
Bulgaria
Burkina Faso
Burundi Cambodia
Cameroon
Canada
Cayman Islands
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Colombia
Comoros Congo, Dem. Rep.
Congo, Rep. Costa Rica
Cote d'Ivoire
Croatia Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic
Denmark Dominica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador Egypt, Arab Rep.
El Salvador Eritrea Estonia Ethiopia
Faeroe Islands
Fiji
Finland France
Gabon
Gambia, The Georgia Germany Ghana
Greece
Grenada Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hong Kong, China
Hungary Iceland India
Indonesia
Iran, Islamic Rep.
Iraq
Ireland Israel
Italy
Jamaica Japan
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Korea, Dem. Rep.
Korea, Rep. Kuwait
Kyrgyz Republic Lao PDR Latvia
Lebanon Lesotho Liberia Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macao, China
Macedonia, FYR
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Mauritania
Mexico
Moldova Mongolia
Morocco Mozambique
Myanmar Namibia Nepal
Netherlands Netherlands Antilles
New Caledonia
New Zealand Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria Norway
Oman
Pakistan
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines Poland
Portugal
Puerto Rico Qatar
Romania Russian Federation
Rwanda
Sao Tome and Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovak Republic Slovenia
Solomon Islands Somalia South Africa
Spain
Sri Lanka
St. Kitts and Nevis St. Lucia
St. Vincent and the Grenadines
Sudan
Suriname
Swaziland
Sweden
Switzerland Syrian Arab Republic
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Togo
Trinidad and Tobago Tunisia Turkey
Turkmenistan
Uganda
Ukraine United Arab Emirates
United Kingdom
United States
Uruguay Uzbekistan
Vanuatu Venezuela, RB
Vietnam Virgin Islands (U.S.)
Yemen, Rep. Yugoslavia, FR (Serbia/Montenegro)
Zambia
Zimbabwe

Kind of data

Observation data/ratings [obs]

Mode of data collection

Other [oth]

Close to 2.4 million international tourists arrived in Costa Rica in 2022, registering an annual growth of over 74 percent. However, this figure was still around 25 below the peak of 2019, when the Central American country recorded more than three million visitor arrivals.

Expenditure on trips to Costa Rica

The total visitor spending in the Central American country, including the cost of transportation, surpassed 1.7 billion U.S. dollars. With an average of 1.5 thousand U.S. dollars per trip, the expenditure of international tourists played a substantial role in the Costa Rican service exports, contributing to nearly one-fifth in 2021.

How do tourists choose to travel in Costa Rica?

Between January 2019 and December 2022, the month which witnessed the most significant number of tourist arrivals was January 2020, surpassing 358 thousand. In 2022, December emerged as the most favored month by tourists, with over 260 thousand arrivals.

Regarding transport modes, the Central American country saw almost 1.3 million international tourist arrivals by air that year, while the number of visitor arrivals by water or road was under 80 thousand. Moreover, approximately 870 thousand tourist arrivals in Costa Rica originated in the United States, making it the primary contributor to the country's tourism industry.

The statistic shows the largest countries in Central America, based on land area. Nicaragua is the largest country in the subregion, with a total area of over 130 thousand square kilometers, followed by Honduras, with more than 112 thousand square kilometers.

More than 718,000 nationals from Nicaragua were living outside their country as of mid-2020. Costa Rica was the main destination for those emigrating from the Central American country, hosting nearly half of them. The United States was the second most popular host country, as 255,000 immigrants from Nicaragua lived there.