Ethnicity Map of UK: Wales
96% of people in Wales are White British, compared with 87% in England. Only 2% come from non-white ethnic backgrounds, meaning that Wales is much less ethnically diverse than England. Wales's Black population also makes up a much smaller proportion of the ethnic minority total than England's.
Two fifths of Wales's ethnic minority population live in Cardiff, the capital, and another fifth in Swansea and Newport. Over half of Wales's Black and Asian populations and a third of its Chinese population live in Cardiff. This is a similar pattern to Scotland, where similar proportions of its ethnic minority total are concentrated in Glasgow and Edinburgh.
Because of the concentration in the cities of South Wales, the rest of the country has a proportionally small amount of people from ethnic minority groups. In rural North Wales over 99% of people are white.
Wales's population at the time of the 2001 census was 2.9 million and it has a very low population density of 140 people per square kilometre.
There are 18,000 White Irish living in Wales, and this group is the oldest of them all, with almost a third above retirement age. Wales has a growing Bangladeshi population, which is also very young, with just 3% above working age. The youngest group of all is the mixed race group, with almost half under the age of 16.
Charlotte Church is from Cardiff
According to the 2001 census, 4.4% of the South West's population were born abroad. Although low by national standards, this nonetheless represented an increase of 34% compared to the census in 1991, when only 3.5% were foreign-born.
The next most populous group is made up of people in the Mixed category. The South West is the only English region where this group is proportionally better represented than Black and Asian people, although in numerical terms the mixed population here is smaller than that of any other region apart from the North East. One reason for this is the large mixed populations in Bristol and Gloucester – more than 2% of both cities' residents – which skews the overall proportion somewhat.
Wales in numbers
Out of every 1,000 people:
- 959 are White British
- 19 are White non-British
- 9 are Asian
- 6 people are mixed race
- 2 people are Black
- 2 people are Chinese
Focus... the Welsh language
Over a fifth of Welsh people said they could speak Welsh, according to the 2001 census. There has been a question about speaking Welsh in every census since 1891, and the number who said they could speak it has been steadily falling, from 54% in 1891 to 19% in 1991. Now Welsh is taught in more schools and the 2001 census reported a rise for the first time in 110 years – to 21%.
Sources: Office for National Statistics, Commission for Racial Equality
