The total population of Mauritania is 4,540,068 people. People in Mauritania speak the Arabic language. The linguistic diversity of Mauritania is diverse according to a fractionalization scale which for Mauritania is 0.326. The median age is approximately 19.9 years. Life expectancy in Mauritania is 63. The female fertility rate in Mauritania is 4.2. Around 13% of the population of Mauritania are obese. The ethnic diversity is rather diverse according to a fractionalization scale which for Mauritania is 0.615. To find out specifics of language, religion, age, gender distribution, and advancement of people in Mauritania see the sections below, as well as visit the section concerning the education in the country.

Population
In Mauritania, the population density is 3.36 people per square kilometer (9 per square mile). Because of this statistic, this country is considered to be very sparsely. The total population of Mauritania is 4,540,068 people. Mauritania has approximately 90,206 foreign immigrants. Immigrants in Mauritania represent 0.1 percent of the total number of immigrants in the world. Immigrants in Mauritania represent 2.3 percent of the total number of immigrants in the world. The ethnic diversity of Mauritania is rather diverse according to a fractionalization scale based on ethnicity. Ethnic fractionalization (EF) deals with the number, sizes, socioeconomic distribution, and geographical location of distinct cultural groups, usually in a state or some otherwise delineated territory. Specific cultural features might refer to language, skin color, religion, ethnicity, customs and traditions, history, or other distinctive criteria, alone or in combination. Frequently, these features are used for social exclusion and the monopolization of power. The index of ethnic fractionalization in Mauritania is 0.615. This means that there is a relatively high number of unique ethnic groups in Mauritania. EF is usually measured as 1 minus the Herfindahl concentration index of ethnolinguistic group shares, which reproduces the probability that two randomly drawn individuals from the population belong to different groups. The theoretical maximum of EF of 1 means that each person belongs to a different group. Read below for statistics of Mauritania on median age and gender distribution at various ages.

Age
The median age is approximately 19.9 years. The median age for men is 19, while the median age for women is 20.9.

Gender
The data on gender distribution in a country display how the population is grouped into gender groups, and what is the internal structure of said groups. No such statistics can be provided for Mauritania.

Religion
The majority religion of Mauritania is Islam, the followers of which comprise 99.1% of all religious believers in the country. Islam (Arabic: الإسلام‎) is a monotheistic and Abrahamic religion articulated by the Quran, a religious text considered by its adherents to be the verbatim word of God (Allāh), and, for the vast majority of adherents, by the teachings and normative example (called the sunnah, Arabic سنة, composed of accounts called hadith, Arabic حديث) of Muhammad, considered by most of them to be the last prophet of God. An adherent of Islam is called a Muslim. Besides Islam, there are several other religions present within the country. Other religions in Mauritania are Buddhism, folk religions. The religious diversity of Mauritania is almost homogeneous according to a fractionalization scale based on the number of religions in Mauritania. The index of religious fractionalization in Mauritania is 0.0149. This score means that there is only one major religion within Mauritania: Islam. Some minor beliefs, however, can also be encountered.