de
birth rate. The birth rate is usually the dominant factor in
determining the rate of population growth. It depends on both the
level of fertility and the age structure of the population.

Budget: This entry includes revenues, total expenditures, and capital
expenditures.

Climate: This entry includes a brief description of typical weather
regimes throughout the year.

Coastline: This entry gives the total length of the boundary between
the land area (including islands) and the sea.

Communications: This category deals with the means of exchanging
information and includes the radio, telephone, and television entries.

Communications--note: This entry includes miscellaneous communications
information of significance not included elsewhere.

Constitution: This entry includes the dates of adoption, revisions,
and major amendments.

Country map: Most versions of the Factbook provide a country map in
color. The maps were produced from the best information available at
the time of preparation. Names and/or boundaries may have changed
subsequently.

Country name: This entry includes all forms of the country's name
approved by the US Board on Geographic Names (Italy is used as an
example): conventional long form (Italian Republic), conventional
short form (Italy), local long form (Repubblica Italiana), local short
form (Italia), former (Kingdom of Italy), as well as the abbreviation.
See the Terminology note regarding the use of the term "country."

Currency: This entry identifies the local medium of exchange and its
basic subunit.

Current issues: This entry briefly characterizes major geographic,
social, political, and military developments in the past 12 months and
may include a statement about one or two key future trends. This entry
appears for only a few countries at the present time, but will be
added to all countries in the future.

Data code: This entry gives the official US Government digraph that
precisely identifies every land entity without overlap, duplication,
or omission. AF, for example, is the data code for Afghanistan. This
two-letter country code is a standardized geopolitical data element
promulgated in the Federal Information Processing Standards
Publication (FIPS) 10-4 by the National Institute of Standards and
Technology at the US Department of Commerce and maintained by the
Office of the Geographer and Global Issues at the US Department of
State. The data code is used to eliminate confu