page_title: North Rhine-Westphalia
section_title: Demographics
hierarchical_section_title: North Rhine-Westphalia / Demographics
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Düsseldorf Rhein mit Altstadt
context_page_description: North Rhine-Westphalia is a state of Germany. It is the most-populous of the 16 states of Germany.
  North Rhine-Westphalia is located in western Germany covering an area of 34,084 square kilometres, which makes it the fourth-largest state. Apart from the city-states it is also the most densely populated German state. NRW has a population of 17.9 million making it the largest German state by population and features 30 of the 81 German municipalities with over 100,000 inhabitants, including Cologne, the state capital Düsseldorf, Dortmund and Essen and other cities predominantly located in the Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan area, the largest urban area in Germany and the third-largest on the European continent. The location of the Rhine-Ruhr at the heart of the European Blue Banana makes it well connected to other major European cities and metropolitan areas like the Randstad, the Flemish Diamond and the Frankfurt Rhine Main Region.
context_section_description: North Rhine-Westphalia has a population of approximately 17.5 million inhabitants (more than the entire former East Germany, and slightly more than the Netherlands) and is centred around the polycentric Rhine-Ruhr metropolitan region, which includes the industrial Ruhr region with the largest city of Dortmund and the Rhenish cities of Bonn, Cologne and Düsseldorf. 30 of the 80 largest cities in Germany are located within North Rhine-Westphalia. The state's capital is Düsseldorf; the state's largest city is Cologne. In 2015, there were 160,478 births and 204,373 deaths. The TRF reached 1.52 (2015) and was highest in Lippe (1.72) and lowest in Bochum (1.29).
  The following table shows the ten largest cities of North Rhine-Westphalia:
caption: Düsseldorf
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