RAMALLAH, March 28 (Xinhua) -- Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) declared Wednesday that the Palestinian population living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank has reached 4.781 million, about half of them under the age of 17.

The PCBS report said that the number of refugees in Palestine is 1,980,490, while 393,163 live in areas classified as Area C under the full Israeli control according to the interim Oslo agreement signed between the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and Israel in 1993.

The rate of illiteracy declined to 3.5 percent while the rate of unemployment reached 26.3 percent.

The report also noted that there are 158,573 structures and buildings in Palestine, out of which 100,000 residential units are empty.