Geography

Gäu has an area, , of 62.01 square kilometres (23.9 sq mi). Of this area, 27.74 km² (10.7 sq mi) or 44.7% is used for agricultural purposes, while 23.36 km² (9 sq mi) or 37.7% is forested. Of the rest of the land, 10.41 km² (4 sq mi) or 16.8% is settled (buildings or roads), 0.44 km² (0.169884949780715 sq mi) or 0.7% is either rivers or lakes and 0.06 km² (14.8 acre) or 0.1% is unproductive land.

Of the built up area, industrial buildings made up 3.1% of the total area while housing and buildings made up 6.6% and transportation infrastructure made up 5.0%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 1.5% of the area Out of the forested land, 36.4% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.2% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 41.9% is used for growing crops, while 1.2% is used for orchards or vine crops and 1.6% is used for alpine pastures. 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 Tierced per fess Gules Argent and Sable.

Demographics

Gäu 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....

 (15,113 or 90.3%), with 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 second most common (353 or 2.1%) and Serbo-Croatian

Serbo-Croatian

Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...

 being third (309 or 1.8%). There are 82 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 7 people who speak Romansh.

, the gender distribution of the population was 50.5% male and 49.5% female. The population was made up of 7,235 Swiss men (40.2% of the population) and 1,856 (10.3%) non-Swiss men. There were 7,356 Swiss women (40.8%) and 1,566 (8.7%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the district 6,092 or about 36.4% were born in Gäu and lived there in 2000. There were 3,970 or 23.7% who were born in the same canton, while 3,794 or 22.7% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 2,343 or 14.0% were born outside of Switzerland.

In there were 151 live births to Swiss citizens and 40 births to non-Swiss citizens, and in same time span there were 118 deaths of Swiss citizens and 6 non-Swiss citizen deaths. Ignoring immigration and emigration, the population of Swiss citizens increased by 33 while the foreign population increased by 34. There were 13 Swiss men and 15 Swiss women who immigrated back to Switzerland. At the same time, there were 64 non-Swiss men and 73 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 an increase of 129 and the non-Swiss population increased by 134 people. This represents a population growth rate of 1.5%.

, there were 7,040 people who were single and never married in the district. There were 8,034 married individuals, 882 widows or widowers and 781 individuals who are divorced.

There were 1,856 households that consist of only one person and 525 households with five or more people. Out of a total of 6,707 households that answered this question, 27.7% were households made up of just one person and 61 were adults who lived with their parents. Of the rest of the households, there are 1,984 married couples without children, 2,306 married couples with children There were 311 single parents with a child or children. There were 87 households that were made up unrelated people and 102 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 29.77% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were 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...

 (29.24%), 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....

 (23.3%) and the SP

Social Democratic Party of Switzerland

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

 (11.06%). In the federal election, a total of 6,158 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 52.5%.

Religion

From the , 9,422 or 56.3% were Roman Catholic, while 3,682 or 22.0% 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 323 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 1.93% of the population), there were 29 individuals (or about 0.17% 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 196 individuals (or about 1.17% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There was 1 individual who was Jewish

Judaism

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

, and 980 (or about 5.86% 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 62 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...

, 34 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 6 individuals who belonged to another church. 1,562 (or about 9.33% 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 440 individuals (or about 2.63% of the population) did not answer the question.

Education

In Gäu about 6,556 or (39.2%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 1,493 or (8.9%) 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 1,493 who completed tertiary schooling, 72.8% were Swiss men, 17.3% were Swiss women, 6.7% were non-Swiss men and 3.2% were non-Swiss women.

During the 2010-2011 school year there were a total of 451 students in the Gäu school system. The education system

Education in Switzerland

The education system in Switzerland is very diverse, because the constitution of Switzerland delegates the authority for the school system mainly to the cantons...

 in the Canton of Solothurn requires students to attend six years of primary school, with some of the children attending smaller, specialized classes. In the Gäu district system there were no students in primary school but 21 students in the special, smaller classes. The secondary school

Secondary school

Secondary school is a term used to describe an educational institution where the final stage of schooling, known as secondary education and usually compulsory up to a specified age, takes place...

program consists of three lower, obligatory years of schooling, followed by three to five years of optional, advanced schools. 430 lower secondary students attend school in the district schools.