Mergers and name changes

On 1 January 1973 the former municipality of Grod merged into the municipality of Gretzenbach

Gretzenbach

Gretzenbach is a municipality in the district of Olten in the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland.-History:Gretzenbach is first mentioned in 778 as Grezzinbach though this comes from a 10th Century copy of the older original. In 1265 it was mentioned as Grezenbach.-Geography:Gretzenbach has an...

.

Geography

Olten has an area, , of 80.55 square kilometres (31.1 sq mi). Of this area, 24.88 km² (9.6 sq mi) or 30.9% is used for agricultural purposes, while 34.43 km² (13.3 sq mi) or 42.7% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 19.7 km² (7.6 sq mi) or 24.5% is settled (buildings or roads), 1.38 km² (0.532820978857698 sq mi) or 1.7% is either rivers or lakes and 0.16 km² (0.0617763453748056 sq mi) or 0.2% is unproductive land.

Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 3.3% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 11.2% and transportation infrastructure made up 6.4%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 2.3% of the area while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 1.3%. Out of the forested land, 41.2% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.5% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 29.1% is used for growing crops, while 1.3% is used for orchards or vine crops. All the water in the district is flowing water.

Coat of arms

The blazon

Blazon

In heraldry and heraldic vexillology, a blazon is a formal description of a coat of arms, flag or similar emblem, from which the reader can reconstruct the appropriate image...

 of the municipal coat of arms

Coat of arms

A coat of arms is a unique heraldic design on a shield or escutcheon or on a surcoat or tabard used to cover and protect armour and to identify the wearer. Thus the term is often stated as "coat-armour", because it was anciently displayed on the front of a coat of cloth...

 is Argent three Fir Trees trunked Gules issuant from a Mount of 3 Coupeaux of the second.

Demographics

Olten has a population of .

Most of the population speaks German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 (42,187 or 86.1%), with Italian

Italian language

Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 being second most common (2,130 or 4.3%) and Albanian

Albanian language

Albanian is an Indo-European language spoken by approximately 7.6 million people, primarily in Albania and Kosovo but also in other areas of the Balkans in which there is an Albanian population, including western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, southern Serbia and northwestern Greece...

 being third (855 or 1.7%). There are 377 people who speak French

French language

French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...

 and 48 people who speak Romansh.

, the gender distribution of the population was 49.5% male and 50.5% female. The population was made up of 18,728 Swiss men (36.5% of the population) and 6,688 (13.0%) non-Swiss men. There were 20,186 Swiss women (39.3%) and 5,772 (11.2%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the district 12,962 or about 26.5% were born in Olten and lived there in 2000. There were 11,079 or 22.6% who were born in the same canton, while 13,820 or 28.2% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 9,397 or 19.2% were born outside of Switzerland.

In there were 277 live births to Swiss citizens and 163 births to non-Swiss citizens, and in same time span there were 413 deaths of Swiss citizens and 34 non-Swiss citizen deaths. Ignoring immigration and emigration, the population of Swiss citizens decreased by 136 while the foreign population increased by 129. There were 38 Swiss men and 31 Swiss women who immigrated back to Switzerland. At the same time, there were 214 non-Swiss men and 146 non-Swiss women who immigrated from another country to Switzerland. The total Swiss population change in 2008 (from all sources, including moves across municipal borders) was a decrease of 119 and the non-Swiss population increased by 284 people. This represents a population growth rate of 0.3%.

, there were 19,413 people who were single and never married in the district. There were 23,656 married individuals, 3,173 widows or widowers and 2,744 individuals who are divorced.

There were 7,298 households that consist of only one person and 1,254 households with five or more people. Out of a total of 21,532 households that answered this question, 33.9% were households made up of just one person and 162 were adults who lived with their parents. Of the rest of the households, there are 6,311 married couples without children, 6,134 married couples with children There were 1,028 single parents with a child or children. There were 305 households that were made up unrelated people and 294 households that were made some sort of institution or another collective housing.

The historical population is given in the following chart:

Politics

In the 2007 federal election

Swiss federal election, 2007

Elections to the Swiss Federal Assembly, the federal parliament of Switzerland, were held on Sunday, 21 October 2007. In a few cantons, a second round of the elections to the Council of States was held on 11 November, 18 November, and 25 November 2007...

 the most popular party was the SVP

Swiss People's Party

The Swiss People's Party , also known as the Democratic Union of the Centre , is a conservative political party in Switzerland. Chaired by Toni Brunner, but spearheaded by Christoph Blocher, the party is the largest party in the Federal Assembly, with 58 members of the National Council and 6 of...

 which received 29.04% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SP

Social Democratic Party of Switzerland

The Social Democratic Party of Switzerland is the largest centre-left political party in Switzerland....

 (20.67%), the CVP

Christian Democratic People's Party of Switzerland

The Christian Democratic People's Party of Switzerland is a Christian democratic political party in Switzerland. It is the fourth-largest party in the National Council, with 31 seats, and the largest in the Council of States, with 15 seats. It has one seat, that of Doris Leuthard, on the Swiss...

 (19.5%) and the FDP

FDP.The Liberals

FDP.The Liberals is a classical liberal political party in Switzerland. It is the joint-largest party in the Federal Council, third-largest party in the National Council, and second-largest in the Council of States....

 (18.08%). In the federal election, a total of 16,855 votes were cast, and the voter turnout

Voter turnout

Voter turnout is the percentage of eligible voters who cast a ballot in an election . After increasing for many decades, there has been a trend of decreasing voter turnout in most established democracies since the 1960s...

 was 51.3%.

Religion

From the , 21,525 or 43.9% were Roman Catholic, while 13,418 or 27.4% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church

Swiss Reformed Church

The Reformed branch of Protestantism in Switzerland was started in Zürich by Huldrych Zwingli and spread within a few years to Basel , Bern , St...

. Of the rest of the population, there were 831 members of an Orthodox church

Orthodox Christianity

The term Orthodox Christianity may refer to:* the Eastern Orthodox Church and its various geographical subdivisions...

 (or about 1.70% of the population), there were 721 individuals (or about 1.47% of the population) who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church

Christian Catholic Church of Switzerland

The Christian Catholic Church of Switzerland is the Swiss member church of the Union of Utrecht, also known as Old Catholic Church, originally founded by the jansenists, with a later influx of discontented Catholics following their disappointment with the First Vatican Council. It has 14,000...

, and there were 1,007 individuals (or about 2.06% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 17 individuals (or about 0.03% of the population) who were Jewish

Judaism

Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...

, and 3,278 (or about 6.69% of the population) who were Islam

Islam

Islam . The most common are and .   : Arabic pronunciation varies regionally. The first vowel ranges from ~~. The second vowel ranges from ~~~...

ic. There were 170 individuals who were Buddhist

Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion and philosophy encompassing a variety of traditions, beliefs and practices, largely based on teachings attributed to Siddhartha Gautama, commonly known as the Buddha . The Buddha lived and taught in the northeastern Indian subcontinent some time between the 6th and 4th...

, 231 individuals who were Hindu

Hinduism

Hinduism is the predominant and indigenous religious tradition of the Indian Subcontinent. Hinduism is known to its followers as , amongst many other expressions...

 and 43 individuals who belonged to another church. 6,242 (or about 12.74% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic

Agnosticism

Agnosticism is the view that the truth value of certain claims—especially claims about the existence or non-existence of any deity, but also other religious and metaphysical claims—is unknown or unknowable....

 or atheist

Atheism

Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...

, and 1,503 individuals (or about 3.07% of the population) did not answer the question.

Education

In Olten about 18,874 or (38.5%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 5,493 or (11.2%) have completed additional higher education (either University or a Fachhochschule

Fachhochschule

A Fachhochschule or University of Applied Sciences is a German type of tertiary education institution, sometimes specialized in certain topical areas . Fachhochschulen were founded in Germany and later adopted by Austria, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Greece...

). Of the 5,493 who completed tertiary schooling, 66.9% were Swiss men, 20.2% were Swiss women, 8.1% were non-Swiss men and 4.8% were non-Swiss women.