Demographics of England

• 1. Introduction

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  The Demographics of England have been tracked by a national census every ten years since 1801. When the first of those counts was taken, England was a country on the cusp of industrialization, its population a fraction of what it would become. By the time the most recent census was completed in 2021, roughly 56,489,800 people called England home. That number tells one story. But behind it lies a much richer set of questions: Where did those millions of people come from? What languages do they speak? How have the proportions of age, religion, and ethnicity shifted across centuries? And what do the raw numbers reveal about a society in motion?

• 2. A Population in Motion

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  In 1086, when William the Conqueror's administrators completed the Domesday Survey, the scholar Russell, writing in 1948, calculated the total English population at roughly 1,105,216 people. That figure included landowners, burgesses, and clergy. Among the clergy alone, there were 740 monks, 200 nuns, and 4,500 secular clergy recorded that year. The counties of Yorkshire, Lancashire, Cheshire, and several others showed unusually low populations, a direct consequence of the Harrying of the North. Norfolk was the most populous county in that survey, with an estimated 95,438 people.

  From that medieval baseline, England's population climbed over centuries to the 53,012,456 counted in 2011, and then to 56,489,800 a decade later. The 2021 census recorded 28,833,712 women and 27,656,336 men. The Total Fertility Rate in 2021 stood at 1.61 children per woman, well below the replacement level of around two.

• 3. Births, Deaths, and the Postwar Wave

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  The years immediately following the Second World War produced a sharp surge in births. In 1947, live births in the UK reached 829,863 and the crude birth rate stood at 20.5 per thousand, among the highest recorded in the postwar period. By contrast, in 1976 and 1977, deaths briefly exceeded or equalled births, pushing the natural change into negative or near-zero territory.

  From the early 2000s, the picture shifted again. Between 2004 and 2012, live births climbed steadily, reaching 694,241 in 2012 with a fertility rate of 1.94. After that peak, births fell each year. By 2020, when deaths spiked to 569,700 in a year marked by the pandemic, the natural increase shrank to just 15,495. The 2023 figures show births at 563,561 and deaths at 544,032, leaving a natural increase of only 19,529. In 2025-35.5% of all live births were to mothers born outside the UK, and for 41.1% of live births, one or both parents were born outside the UK.

• 4. Where People Came From

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  In the 1971 census, 91.3% of England's residents had been born in England itself. By 2021, that share had fallen to 82.65%. The group that grew most dramatically in this period came from other European Union countries. In 1971, those born in EU member states (excluding Ireland) numbered around 569,816, or roughly 1.2% of the population. By 2021, that figure had risen to 3,236,799, representing 5.73%.

  Poland accounts for a substantial portion of that shift. The Polish-born population in England was 68,049 in 1991. By 2021 it had risen to 718,251. Romania tells a similar story: just 3,762 Romanian-born residents were recorded in 1991; that number reached 530,320 by 2021.

  Migration from South Asia also grew substantially over the same period. The number of India-born residents rose from 301,862 in 1971 to 906,962 in 2021. Those born in Pakistan went from 131,826 to 616,454 over the same span. Nigeria-born residents numbered 45,873 in 1991 and had grown to 266,877 by 2021.

• 5. Ethnicity and the Changing Classroom

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  Estimates from 1951 placed the total selected Commonwealth non-white population of England and Wales at around 74,500 people, or 0.17% of the total. By mid-1968, that estimate had risen to roughly 1,123,000, around 2.31%. The 2021 census recorded a non-white population of 10,706,647, representing 19% of England's total.

  School enrollment figures capture this shift with particular clarity. In the school year 1997, White students made up 89% of all pupils. By 2023-24, that share had declined to 69.1%. Over the same period, Asian or Asian British students rose from 6.3% to 13.4% of all pupils. Black or Black British students went from 3.7% to 6.5%. The White British share specifically fell from 80.3% in 2004 to 61.3% in 2023-24, while the White Other category, which includes many children of European migrants, climbed from 2.1% in 2004 to 7.2% in 2023-24.

• 6. Languages Spoken Across England

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  English was the main language of 46,936,780 residents of England in the 2011 census, representing 92.02% of people aged three and over. Polish was the second most commonly spoken main language, with 529,173 speakers, or 1.04% of the population. Punjabi ranked third, spoken by 271,580 people, followed by Urdu at 266,330 speakers.

  Bengali (including Sylheti and Chatgaya) and Gujarati each reached the 200,000 range, at 216,196 and 212,217 speakers respectively. Arabic was the main language of 152,490 residents. Welsh, despite being a native British language with legal recognition across the border, was the main language of only 8,248 people in England. Cornish, once spoken across the southwest peninsula, registered just 554 main speakers. Over two thousand other languages combined accounted for a further 2.37% of the total population surveyed.

• 7. Faith and Its Shifting Ground

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  In 2001-35,251,244 people in England identified as Christian in the census, a figure representing 71.74% of the total population. Twenty years later, that count had fallen to 26,167,899, or 46.3%, a drop of more than nine million people proportionally.

  The share of people reporting no religion moved in the opposite direction. In 2001, 7,171,332 people, or 14.59%, said they held no religion. By 2021 that figure had grown to 20,715,664, or 36.7% of the population. The Muslim population grew from 1,524,887 in 2001 to 3,801,186 in 2021, rising from 3.10% to 6.7% of England's total. Hindu residents numbered 546,982 in 2001 and reached 1,032,533 by 2021. The Sikh population grew from 327,343 to 520,092 over the same two decades. By 2021, the number of people in England reporting no religion was approaching parity with those identifying as Christian.