Dorneck District is one of the ten districts of the canton of Solothurn in Switzerland, situated to the north of the canton. Together with Thierstein District, it forms the Amtei of Dorneck-Thierstein. It has a population of . Five of the district's eleven municipalities are exclaves, either within the canton of Basel-Country or bordering France.
Municipalities
Dorneck District contains the following municipalities:
Mergers and name changes
On 1 January 1986 the municipality of Hofstetten changed its name to Hofstetten-Flüh.
Geography
Dorneck has an area,, of. Of this area, or 44.2% is used for agricultural purposes, while or 44.1% is forested. Of the rest of the land, or 11.5% is settled, or 0.2% is either rivers or lakes and or 0.1% is unproductive land. Of the built up area, housing and buildings made up 7.1% and transportation infrastructure made up 2.9%. Out of the forested land, 41.7% of the total land area is heavily forested and 2.3% is covered with orchards or small clusters of trees. Of the agricultural land, 37.8% is used for growing crops, while 6.0% is used for orchards or vine crops. All the water in the district is flowing water.
Coat of arms
The blazon of the municipal coat of arms is Argent two Fish-hooks inverted and addorsed Sable.
Demographics
Dorneck has a population of Most of the population speaks German, with Italian being second most common and French being third. There are 9 people who speak Romansh. , the gender distribution of the population was 48.7% male and 51.3% female. The population was made up of 7,911 Swiss men and 1,603 non-Swiss men. There were 8,446 Swiss women and 1,568 non-Swiss women. Of the population in the district 4,863 or about 27.0% were born in Dorneck and lived there in 2000. There were 1,178 or 6.6% who were born in the same canton, while 8,211 or 45.7% were born somewhere else in Switzerland, and 3,171 or 17.6% were born outside of Switzerland. In there were 138 live births to Swiss citizens and 22 births to non-Swiss citizens, and in same time span there were 102 deaths of Swiss citizens and 7 non-Swiss citizen deaths. Ignoring immigration and emigration, the population of Swiss citizens increased by 36 while the foreign population increased by 15. There were 5 Swiss men who immigrated back to Switzerland and 15 Swiss women who emigrated from Switzerland. At the same time, there were 73 non-Swiss men and 29 non-Swiss women who immigrated from another country to Switzerland. The total Swiss population change in 2008 was an increase of 21 and the non-Swiss population increased by 99 people. This represents a population growth rate of 0.6%. , there were 7,349 people who were single and never married in the district. There were 8,940 married individuals, 801 widows or widowers and 888 individuals who are divorced. There were 2,056 households that consist of only one person and 538 households with five or more people. Out of a total of 7,429 households that answered this question, 27.7% were households made up of just one person and 47 were adults who lived with their parents. Of the rest of the households, there are 2,251 married couples without children, 2,412 married couples with children There were 394 single parents with a child or children. There were 105 households that were made up unrelated people and 164 households that were made some sort of institution or another collective housing. The historical population is given in the following chart: Colors= id:lightgrey value:gray id:darkgrey value:gray ImageSize = width:960 height:210 PlotArea = height:150 left:100 bottom:50 right:100 AlignBars = justify DateFormat = x.y Period = from:0 till:18000 TimeAxis = orientation:vertical AlignBars = justify ScaleMajor = gridcolor:darkgrey increment:4000 start:0 ScaleMinor = gridcolor:lightgrey increment:800 start:0 PlotData= color:yellowgreen width:40 mark: align:center bar:1850 from:start till:6265 text:"6,265" bar:1860 from:start till:6424 text:"6,424" bar:1870 from:start till:6650 text:"6,650" bar:1880 from:start till:6513 text:"6,513" bar:1888 from:start till:6411 text:"6,411" bar:1900 from:start till:6788 text:"6,788" bar:1910 from:start till:7362 text:"7,362" bar:1920 from:start till:7768 text:"7,768" bar:1930 from:start till:8528 text:"8,528" bar:1941 from:start till:8516 text:"8,516" bar:1950 from:start till:9299 text:"9,299" bar:1960 from:start till:10035 text:"10,035" bar:1970 from:start till:11805 text:"11,805" bar:1980 from:start till:13309 text:"13,309" bar:1990 from:start till:15701 text:"15,701" bar:2000 from:start till:17978 text:"17,978"
Politics
In the 2007 federal election the most popular party was the SVP which received 24.07% of the vote. The next three most popular parties were the SP, the CVP and the FDP. In the federal election, a total of 6,941 votes were cast, and the voter turnout was 52.9%.
Religion
From the, 7,644 or 42.5% were Roman Catholic, while 4,510 or 25.1% belonged to the Swiss Reformed Church. Of the rest of the population, there were 103 members of an Orthodox church, there were 65 individuals who belonged to the Christian Catholic Church, and there were 654 individuals who belonged to another Christian church. There were 4 individuals who were Jewish, and 276 who were Islamic. There were 37 individuals who were Buddhist, 73 individuals who were Hinduand 21 individuals who belonged to another church. 3,968 belonged to no church, are agnostic or atheist, and 623 individuals did not answer the question.
Education
In Dorneck about 7,098 or of the population have completed non-mandatory upper secondary education, and 3,166 or have completed additional higher education. Of the 3,166 who completed tertiary schooling, 55.7% were Swiss men, 24.4% were Swiss women, 10.7% were non-Swiss men and 9.3% were non-Swiss women.
