Census 2011: British ethnicity mapped over time
New population data shows a more ethnically diverse England and Wales, with four in five residents now describing themselves as white British and a rise in mixed race households to 12 per cent.
While 80 per cent of people describe themselves as white British in the latest census data from the Office of National Statistics, 86 per cent of people living in England and Wales see themselves as “white”. This is down from 91.3 per cent in 2001 and 94.1 per cent in 1991.
Indian is the next largest ethnic group with 1.4 million people (2.5 per cent) followed by Pakistani (2 per cent) of the population. This is consistent with census findings on international migration, which found that foreign-born UK residents are most likely to be from south Asian countries, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The white Irish ethnic group is the only other group to fall in the last decade.
Read more: Census 2011 reveals rise in immigration and education, and drop in religion, marriage and mortgages
Mixed race
The number of people who describe themselves as mixed race is up from 1.27 per cent in 2001, to 2.2 per cent. However there has been a bigger rise – to 12 per cent – in the number of households with members of different ethnic groups, from 15.2 million households in 2001, to 16.3 million households in 2011.
The most ethnically diverse area in England and Wales is London, where 45 per cent of the city’s 8.2 million people are white British. The second largest ethnic group in the capital os Asian, at 18.4 per cent, followed by Black, at 13.3 per cent. London also has the top ten most diverse areas in all of the areas surveyed.
As well as ethnic identity, 91 per cent of the resident population identified with at least one UK nationality – English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British – in 2011.
Year of UK arrival
The map below shows the percentage of local populations born in the UK and the percentage of residents who arrived in the UK at some point over the last 70 years. For example in Manchester in 2011, 74.7 per cent of the population were born in the UK, and around 16 per cent of residents arrived in the UK in the last ten years.
