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Census: Population Shrank 2.3M

Russia has slipped one place in the rating of the world's biggest countries by population and now ranks eighth with 142.8 million inhabitants, the State Statistics Service said.

The country's population shrank 2.3 million people between 2002 and 2010, according to the final results of last year's nationwide census released Friday.

Russia is trailing China, India, the United States, Indonesia, Brazil, Pakistan and Bangladesh in population, according to UN data..

The share of the urban population stands at 74 percent, virtually unchanged since the previous census in 2002, but the average Russian's age has grown from 37.7 to 39 years.

Women outnumber men by 10.7 million, but mostly due to a large number of early male deaths.

Russians are the dominant ethnic group with 111 million (80.9 percent of the whole populace), followed by Tatars (5.3 million, 3.8 percent) and Ukrainians (1.9 million, 1.4 percent). The census also brought out some unusual ethnic results, uncovering, among others, 46 Jedis and one "Gnome" in Moscow, Vesti state television said.

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