BEIRUT -- More than a third of Lebanon's working population aged between 18 and 35 want to emigrate at least temporarily, according to a study released Thursday by Beirut's Saint Joseph University.

The study by the sociology and anthropology department of the Francophone University found that 37 percent of the young working population wanted to emigrate either temporarily or for good, AFP reported.

Of them, 43 percent are men and 23 percent women.

The results were higher in Beirut, where 48 percent want to emigrate, and in the suburbs where 51 percent want to do so.

The results were obtained from a survey of 15,507 young people working or seeking work, carried out in different parts of the country.

Unemployment in Lebanon is highest among the 18-35 age group, of whom 15.5 percent are jobless and who make up 71 percent of the total number of unemployed.

Eighty percent of those surveyed said they wanted to emigrate to find a job, while only one percent wanted to travel to study, 0.6 percent to obtain another nationality, and 4.7 due to the "general situation".

The study was led by Professor Shoghig Kasparian, who gave a rough estimate of 600,000 for the number of Lebanese who have emigrated since the start of the 1975-1990 civil war.

She found that 46 percent of Lebanese families had at least one member who had emigrated since 1975.

The study, whose publication coincided with World Population Day, estimated Lebanon's population at 3,935,000, in the absence of an official census since the 1930s.