Starrkirch-Wil is a

municipality A municipality is usually a single administrative division having municipal corporation, corporate status and powers of self-government or jurisdiction as granted by national and regional laws to which it is subordinate. The term ''municipality' ...

in the district of Olten in the canton of Solothurn in

Switzerland Switzerland, officially the Swiss Confederation, is a landlocked country located in west-central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the south, France to the west, Germany to the north, and Austria and Liechtenstein to the east. Switzerland ...

History

Starrkirch is first mentioned in 1036 as ''Starchenchilcha''. In 1288 Wil was mentioned as ''Wile''.

Geography

Starrkirch-Wil has an area, , of . Of this area, or 22.8% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 48.4% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 28.8% is settled (buildings or roads).Swiss Federal Statistical Office-Land Use Statistics
2009 data accessed 25 March 2010 Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 18.5% and transportation infrastructure made up 7.1%. Power and water infrastructure as well as other special developed areas made up 1.1% of the area while parks, green belts and sports fields made up 2.2%. Out of the forested land, 47.3% of the total land area is heavily forested and 1.1% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 13.0% is used for growing crops and 8.7% is pastures, while 1.1% is used for orchards or vine crops. The municipality is located in the Olten district, between the

Aare The Aare () or Aar () is the main tributary of the High Rhine (its discharge even exceeds that of the latter at their confluence) and the longest river that both rises and ends entirely within Switzerland. Its total length from its source to i ...

river and the northern slope of the Engelberg mountain chain. It consists of the main villages of Starrkirch and Wil, settlement of Wartburg and the settlement around the ruins of Vordere Wartburg Castle, which is commonly called Sälischlössli.

Coat of arms

The

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 an accurate image. The verb ''to blazon'' means to create such a description. The visual d ...

of the municipal

coat of arms A coat of arms is a heraldry, heraldic communication design, visual design on an escutcheon (heraldry), escutcheon (i.e., shield), surcoat, or tabard (the last two being outer garments), originating in Europe. The coat of arms on an escutcheon f ...

is ''Azure a Church Argent massoned Sable.''

Demographics

Starrkirch-Wil has a population () of . , 11.8% of the population are resident foreign nationals.Swiss Federal Statistical Office – Superweb database – Gemeinde Statistics 1981-2008
accessed 19 June 2010 Over the last 10 years (1999–2009 ) the population has changed at a rate of 27.9%.
accessed 7 April 2011 Most of the population () speaks German (1,170 or 93.4%), with

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance languag ...

being second most common (27 or 2.2%) and Spanish being third (8 or 0.6%). There are 6 people who speak French. , the gender distribution of the population was 49.8% male and 50.2% female. The population was made up of 699 Swiss men (43.3% of the population) and 104 (6.4%) non-Swiss men. There were 716 Swiss women (44.4%) and 95 (5.9%) non-Swiss women. Of the population in the municipality 249 or about 19.9% were born in Starrkirch-Wil and lived there in 2000. There were 452 or 36.1% who were born in the same canton, while 372 or 29.7% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 144 or 11.5% were born outside of Switzerland. In there were 12 live births to Swiss citizens and 5 births to non-Swiss citizens, and in same time span there were 14 deaths of Swiss citizens. Ignoring immigration and emigration, the population of Swiss citizens decreased by 2 while the foreign population increased by 5. There was 1 Swiss man and 2 Swiss women who emigrated from Switzerland. At the same time, there were 6 non-Swiss men who immigrated from another country to Switzerland and 1 non-Swiss woman who emigrated from Switzerland to another country. The total Swiss population change in 2008 (from all sources, including moves across municipal borders) was an increase of 25 and the non-Swiss population increased by 1 people. This represents a population growth rate of 1.6%. The age distribution, , in Starrkirch-Wil is; 102 children or 8.1% of the population are between 0 and 6 years old and 155 teenagers or 12.4% are between 7 and 19. Of the adult population, 69 people or 5.5% of the population are between 20 and 24 years old. 379 people or 30.2% are between 25 and 44, and 350 people or 27.9% are between 45 and 64. The senior population distribution is 147 people or 11.7% of the population are between 65 and 79 years old and there are 51 people or 4.1% who are over 80. , there were 451 people who were single and never married in the municipality. There were 702 married individuals, 57 widows or widowers and 43 individuals who are divorced.STAT-TAB Datenwürfel für Thema 40.3 – 2000
accessed 2 February 2011 , there were 528 private households in the municipality, and an average of 2.4 persons per household. There were 132 households that consist of only one person and 19 households with five or more people. Out of a total of 531 households that answered this question, 24.9% were households made up of just one person and there were 2 adults who lived with their parents. Of the rest of the households, there are 185 married couples without children, 180 married couples with children There were 23 single parents with a child or children. There were 6 households that were made up of unrelated people and 3 households that were made up of some sort of institution or another collective housing. there were 305 single family homes (or 80.9% of the total) out of a total of 377 inhabited buildings. There were 48 multi-family buildings (12.7%), along with 16 multi-purpose buildings that were mostly used for housing (4.2%) and 8 other use buildings (commercial or industrial) that also had some housing (2.1%). Of the single family homes 26 were built before 1919, while 72 were built between 1990 and 2000. The greatest number of single family homes (53) were built between 1946 and 1960.Federal Statistical Office STAT-TAB – Datenwürfel für Thema 09.2 – Gebäude und Wohnungen
accessed 28 January 2011 there were 553 apartments in the municipality. The most common apartment size was 4 rooms of which there were 193. There were 8 single room apartments and 246 apartments with five or more rooms. Of these apartments, a total of 515 apartments (93.1% of the total) were permanently occupied, while 15 apartments (2.7%) were seasonally occupied and 23 apartments (4.2%) were empty. , the construction rate of new housing units was 0 new units per 1000 residents. The vacancy rate for the municipality, , was 1.88%. The historical population is given in the following chart: Colors= id:lightgrey value:gray(0.9) id:darkgrey value:gray(0.8) ImageSize = width:1080 height:210 PlotArea = height:150 left:100 bottom:50 right:100 AlignBars = justify DateFormat = x.y Period = from:0 till:1300 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical AlignBars = justify ScaleMajor = gridcolor:darkgrey increment:300 start:0 ScaleMinor = gridcolor:lightgrey increment:60 start:0 PlotData= color:yellowgreen width:40 mark:(line,white) align:center bar:1739 from:start till:98 text:"98" bar:1804 from:start till:206 text:"206" bar:1850 from:start till:361 text:"361" bar:1860 from:start till:376 text:"376" bar:1870 from:start till:424 text:"424" bar:1880 from:start till:483 text:"483" bar:1888 from:start till:557 text:"557" bar:1900 from:start till:572 text:"572" bar:1910 from:start till:613 text:"613" bar:1920 from:start till:674 text:"674" bar:1930 from:start till:739 text:"739" bar:1941 from:start till:823 text:"823" bar:1950 from:start till:875 text:"875" bar:1960 from:start till:919 text:"919" bar:1970 from:start till:1124 text:"1,124" bar:1980 from:start till:1086 text:"1,086" bar:1990 from:start till:1039 text:"1,039" bar:2000 from:start till:1253 text:"1,253"

Politics

In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the SP which received 29.54% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the FDP (22.06%), the SVP (21.46%) and the CVP (14.97%). In the federal election, a total of 687 votes were cast, and the

voter turnout In political science, voter turnout is the participation rate (often defined as those who cast a ballot) of a given election. This is typically either the percentage of Voter registration, registered voters, Suffrage, eligible voters, or all Voti ...

was 61.5%.

Economy

, Starrkirch-Wil had an unemployment rate of 3%. , there were 6 people employed in the primary economic sector and about 3 businesses involved in this sector. 21 people were employed in the secondary sector and there were 5 businesses in this sector. 243 people were employed in the

tertiary sector The tertiary sector of the economy, generally known as the service sector, is the third of the three economic sectors in the three-sector model (also known as the economic cycle). The others are the primary sector (raw materials) and the ...

, with 35 businesses in this sector. There were 678 residents of the municipality who were employed in some capacity, of which females made up 42.8% of the workforce. the total number of

full-time equivalent Full-time equivalent (FTE), or whole time equivalent (WTE), is a unit of measurement that indicates the workload of an employed person (or student) in a way that makes workloads or class loads comparable across various contexts. FTE is often use ...

jobs was 171. The number of jobs in the primary sector was 3, all of which were in agriculture. The number of jobs in the secondary sector was 16 of which 2 or (12.5%) were in manufacturing and 14 (87.5%) were in construction. The number of jobs in the tertiary sector was 152. In the tertiary sector; 18 or 11.8% were in wholesale or retail sales or the repair of motor vehicles, 6 or 3.9% were in the movement and storage of goods, 28 or 18.4% were in a hotel or restaurant, 6 or 3.9% were technical professionals or scientists, 13 or 8.6% were in education and 4 or 2.6% were in health care. , there were 90 workers who commuted into the municipality and 600 workers who commuted away. The municipality is a net exporter of workers, with about 6.7 workers leaving the municipality for every one entering.Swiss Federal Statistical Office – Statweb
accessed 24 June 2010 Of the working population, 18.7% used public transportation to get to work, and 59.4% used a private car.

Religion

From the , 499 or 39.8% were

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

, while 409 or 32.6% belonged to the

Swiss Reformed Church The Protestant Church in Switzerland (PCS), formerly named Federation of Swiss Protestant Churches until 31 December 2019, is a federation of 25 member churches – 24 cantonal churches and the Evangelical-Methodist Church of Switzerland. The P ...

. Of the rest of the population, there were 5 members of an Orthodox church (or about 0.40% of the population), there were 34 individuals (or about 2.71% of the population) who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church, and there were 39 individuals (or about 3.11% of the population) who belonged to another Christian church. There were 24 (or about 1.92% of the population) who were

Islam Islam is an Abrahamic religions, Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the Quran, and the teachings of Muhammad. Adherents of Islam are called Muslims, who are estimated to number Islam by country, 2 billion worldwide and are the world ...

ic. There were 2 individuals who were

Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

. 206 (or about 16.44% of the population) belonged to no church, are agnostic or

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

, and 35 individuals (or about 2.79% of the population) did not answer the question.

Education

In Starrkirch-Wil about 560 or (44.7%) of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 220 or (17.6%) have completed additional higher education (either

university A university () is an educational institution, institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several Discipline (academia), academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly ...

or a ''

Fachhochschule A (; plural ), abbreviated FH, is a university of applied sciences (UAS), in other words a Hochschule, German tertiary education institution that provides professional education in many applied sciences and applied arts, such as engineering, te ...

''). Of the 220 who completed tertiary schooling, 72.3% were Swiss men, 22.7% were Swiss women, 3.2% were non-Swiss men. During the 2010-2011 school year there were a total of 162 students in the Starrkirch-Wil school system. The education system in the Canton of Solothurn allows young children to attend two years of non-obligatory

Kindergarten Kindergarten is a preschool educational approach based on playing, singing, practical activities such as drawing, and social interaction as part of the transition from home to school. Such institutions were originally made in the late 18th cen ...

. During that school year, there were 38 children in kindergarten. The canton's school system requires students to attend six years of

primary school A primary school (in Ireland, India, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, South Africa, and Singapore), elementary school, or grade school (in North America and the Philippines) is a school for primary ...

, with some of the children attending smaller, specialized classes. In the municipality there were 124 students in primary school. The

secondary school A secondary school, high school, or senior school, is an institution that provides secondary education. Some secondary schools provide both ''lower secondary education'' (ages 11 to 14) and ''upper secondary education'' (ages 14 to 18), i.e., b ...

program consists of three lower, obligatory years of schooling, followed by three to five years of optional, advanced schools. All the lower secondary students from Starrkirch-Wil attend their school in a neighboring municipality.Canton of Solothurn – School statistics
accessed 13 March 2011 , there was one student in Starrkirch-Wil who came from another municipality, while 71 residents attended schools outside the municipality.

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control Municipalities of the canton of Solothurn