How quickly is Britain’s ethnic composition changing? We know from the census that the percentage of the population that is white fell from 86% to 82% between 2011 and 2021, while the percentage of the population that is white British fell from 81% to 74%. As recently as 1991, the population of England was 94% white. Which means that practically all of the ethnic change with which we’re familiar has taken place in just 30 years.
However, these statistics don’t give a full picture for two reasons.
First, the period since the 2021 census has seen record levels of immigration into Britain, particularly from non-Western countries like India, Nigeria, China and Pakistan. As a consequence, the rate of ethnic change has likely accelerated in just the last three years. Second, the current ethnic composition will be quite different from the future ethnic composition if groups have different age distributions and levels of fertility. Because whites tend to be older, the white share of the population will decline further purely due to generational replacement.
What about fertility? The Office for National Statistics (ONS) does not publish fertility rates by ethnicity. Some academics have attempted to estimate them using publicly available datasets. For example, a 2016 paper found that South Asians and Afro-Caribbeans have higher fertility rates than whites. It also found that, with the exception of Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, those differences are largely eliminated in the second generation. However, the paper has some limitations and, in any case, the data were from 2009-10.
What the ONS does publish is the distribution of births by ethnicity. This is useful because, in the absence of other influences (i.e., differences in fertility, mortality and migration) it will be the ethnic composition of the country in the future. Here’s the distribution for the year 2023:
As you can see, only 56% of births were white British – which is of course much lower than the percentage of the overall population that is white British (74% in 2021). Consequently, even if mass immigration were to end tomorrow, the White British share of the population would still fall substantially over the coming decades.
It’s unclear exactly how much of the underrepresentation of white British among births is due to ethnic differences in fertility, though part of it almost certainly is. The other part is due to ethnic differences in age distributions: white British women tend to be older and are therefore underrepresented at the ages of peak fertility, i.e., 20-40.
Assuming that mass immigration continues, the white British share of the population in the long run will likely be even lower than 56%. Whether you welcome such change, or regard it as undesirable, there can be little doubt that it is occurring at an unprecedented pace. The matter surely deserves greater prominence in the public debate.
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