Editing Bas-Saint-Laurent (section)

=== Population ===
{{Main|Demographics of Quebec}}
Bas-Saint-Laurent was home to 200,500 inhabitants on the first of July 2011, which represents 2.5% of the total population of Quebec. This number indicates that this share has dropped by 4% since 1996. More than 40% of the population of the region lives in two [[Regional county municipality|RCMs]], [[Rimouski-Neigette Regional County Municipality|Rimouski-Neigette]] (55,364 inhabitants in 2011) and [[Rivière-du-Loup Regional County Municipality|Rivière-du-Loup]] (34,326 inhabitants in 2011).<ref name="SC2011"/>

Since 1951, the region has seen its population stagnate or slightly decline. This is due to two opposing factors, the decline of rural areas and the reinforcement of urban areas, like Rimouski and Rivière-du-Loup. The share of these two towns alone went from 16% of the total population of the region in 1951 to 34% in 2001. The new importance of these urban centres explain the fact that only their RCMs have had a population increase between 1951 and 2001. Opposite to these, RCMs devoid of a strong urban centre, like [[La Matapédia Regional County Municipality|La Matapédia]], [[Témiscouata Regional County Municipality|Témiscouata]] and [[Les Basques RCM|Les Basques]], have been the RCMs where the population has dropped the most in the region.

Accounting for the population decrease observed since 1951, even when Quebec's population has increased by 82%, it is not surprising that the share of the population of Quebec living in Bas-Saint-Laurent has decreased from 5.2% in 1951 to 2.8% in 2001.