Demography usually makes use of administrative area classifications. This is because population statistics, like other statistics, are compiled according the boundaries of administrative areas.
All countries are divided into administrative areas, including Finland.
In Finland the basic unit of the area classification is the municipality. At the beginning of 2001, there were 448 municipalities in the country. The number of sub-regional units was 82. These are formed on the basis of cooperation and commuting between usually a few municipalities. Finland has 20 regions and six provinces (including the region of Åland). In addition, the country is divided into five major regions whose boundaries differ from those of provinces.
One classification that is widely used in demography is the distinction between towns and the countryside. In this case the criterion used is an administrative division. In Finland municipalities are administratively identical, which means that the designation of 'town' is granted to any municipality that wishes to be so designated. Thus there are currently 109 towns in Finland, some of which are very "rural".
The so-called statistical grouping of municipalities was adopted in Finnish population statistics in the 1990s. Here municipalities are divided into three categories: urban municipalities, semi-urban municipalities and rural municipalities. The criterion used for this classification is the proportion of people living in different localities and population size.
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