The fertility rate of a country is the average number of children that women from that country would have throughout their reproductive years. In the United Kingdom in 1800, the average woman of childbearing age would have five children over the course of their lifetime. Over the next 35 years the fertility rate was quite sporadic, rising to over 5.5 in the 1810s and 1820s, then dropping to 4.9 by 1835. This was during and after the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812 with the US, which was a time of increased industrialization, economic depression and high unemployment after the war. As things became more stable, and the 'Pax Britannica' (a period of relative, international peace and economic prosperity for the British Empire) came into full effect, the fertility rate plateaued until 1880, before dropping gradually until the First World War. The fertility rate then jumped from 2.6 to 3.1 children per woman between 1915 and 1920, as many men returned from the war. It then resumed it's previous trajectory in the interwar years, before increasing yet again after the war (albeit, for a much longer time than after WWI), in what is known as the 'Baby Boom'. Like the US, the Baby Boom lasted until around 1980, where it then fell to 1.7 children per woman, and it has remained around this number (between 1.66 and 1.87) since then.

Dataset population: Persons

Country of birth

Country of birth is the country in which a person was born. This topic records whether the person was born in or if they were not born in a country.

For the full country of birth classification in England and Wales, please see the National Statistics Country Classification.

Ethnic group

Ethnic group classifies people according to their own perceived ethnic group and cultural background.

This topic contains ethnic group write-in responses without reference to the five broad ethnic group categories, e.g. all Irish people, irrespective of whether they are White, Mixed/multiple ethnic groups, Asian/Asian British, Black/African/Caribbean/Black British or Other ethnic group, are in the 'Irish' response category. This topic was created as part of the commissioned table processing.

In the past four centuries, the population of the United States has grown from a recorded 350 people around the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1610, to an estimated 331 million people in 2020. The pre-colonization populations of the indigenous peoples of the Americas have proven difficult for historians to estimate, as their numbers decreased rapidly following the introduction of European diseases (namely smallpox, plague and influenza). Native Americans were also omitted from most censuses conducted before the twentieth century, therefore the actual population of what we now know as the United States would have been much higher than the official census data from before 1800, but it is unclear by how much. Population growth in the colonies throughout the eighteenth century has primarily been attributed to migration from the British Isles and the Transatlantic slave trade; however it is also difficult to assert the ethnic-makeup of the population in these years as accurate migration records were not kept until after the 1820s, at which point the importation of slaves had also been illegalized. Nineteenth century In the year 1800, it is estimated that the population across the present-day United States was around six million people, with the population in the 16 admitted states numbering at 5.3 million. Migration to the United States began to happen on a large scale in the mid-nineteenth century, with the first major waves coming from Ireland, Britain and Germany. In some aspects, this wave of mass migration balanced out the demographic impacts of the American Civil War, which was the deadliest war in U.S. history with approximately 620 thousand fatalities between 1861 and 1865. The civil war also resulted in the emancipation of around four million slaves across the south; many of whose ancestors would take part in the Great Northern Migration in the early 1900s, which saw around six million black Americans migrate away from the south in one of the largest demographic shifts in U.S. history. By the end of the nineteenth century, improvements in transport technology and increasing economic opportunities saw migration to the United States increase further, particularly from southern and Eastern Europe, and in the first decade of the 1900s the number of migrants to the U.S. exceeded one million people in some years. Twentieth and twenty-first century The U.S. population has grown steadily throughout the past 120 years, reaching one hundred million in the 1910s, two hundred million in the 1960s, and three hundred million in 2007. In the past century, the U.S. established itself as a global superpower, with the world's largest economy (by nominal GDP) and most powerful military. Involvement in foreign wars has resulted in over 620,000 further U.S. fatalities since the Civil War, and migration fell drastically during the World Wars and Great Depression; however the population continuously grew in these years as the total fertility rate remained above two births per woman, and life expectancy increased (except during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918).

Since the Second World War, Latin America has replaced Europe as the most common point of origin for migrants, with Hispanic populations growing rapidly across the south and border states. Because of this, the proportion of non-Hispanic whites, which has been the most dominant ethnicity in the U.S. since records began, has dropped more rapidly in recent decades. Ethnic minorities also have a much higher birth rate than non-Hispanic whites, further contributing to this decline, and the share of non-Hispanic whites is expected to fall below fifty percent of the U.S. population by the mid-2000s. In 2020, the United States has the third-largest population in the world (after China and India), and the population is expected to reach four hundred million in the 2050s.

The statistic shows the total population in the United Kingdom from 2015 to 2019, with projections up until 2025. The population grew steadily over this period.

Population of the United Kingdom

Despite a fertility rate just below the replacement rate, the United Kingdom’s population has been slowly but steadily growing, increasing by an average of 0.6 percent every year since 2002. The age distribution has remained roughly the same for the past ten years or so, with the share of the population over 65 years old seeing a slight increase as the baby boomer generation enters into that age bracket. That share is likely to continue growing slightly, as the United Kingdom has one of the highest life expectancies in the world.

The population of the island nation is predominantly white Christians, but a steady net influx of immigrants, part of a legacy of the wide-reaching former British Empire, has helped diversify the population. One of the largest ethnic minorities in the United Kingdom is that of residents of an Indian background, born either in the UK, India, or in other parts of the world. India itself is experiencing problems with rapid population growth, causing some of its population to leave the country in order to find employment. The United Kingdom’s relatively lower levels of unemployment and the historical connection between the two countries (which has also resulted in family connections between individuals) are likely reasons that make it a popular destination for Indian emigrants.

In 2023, the population of the United Kingdom reached 68.3 million, compared with 67.6 million in 2022. The UK population has more than doubled since 1871 when just under 31.5 million lived in the UK and has grown by around 8.2 million since the start of the twenty-first century. For most of the twentieth century, the UK population steadily increased, with two noticeable drops in population occurring during World War One (1914-1918) and in World War Two (1939-1945). Demographic trends in postwar Britain After World War Two, Britain and many other countries in the Western world experienced a 'baby boom,' with a postwar peak of 1.02 million live births in 1947. Although the number of births fell between 1948 and 1955, they increased again between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s, with more than one million people born in 1964. Since 1964, however, the UK birth rate has fallen from 18.8 births per 1,000 people to a low of just 10.2 in 2020. As a result, the UK population has gotten significantly older, with the country's median age increasing from 37.9 years in 2001 to 40.7 years in 2022. What are the most populated areas of the UK? The vast majority of people in the UK live in England, which had a population of 57.7 million people in 2023. By comparison, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland had populations of 5.44 million, 3.13 million, and 1.9 million, respectively. Within England, South East England had the largest population, at over 9.38 million, followed by the UK's vast capital city of London, at 8.8 million. London is far larger than any other UK city in terms of urban agglomeration, with just four other cities; Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, and Glasgow, boasting populations that exceed one million people.

From the time of Columbus' arrival on the island in 1494, until British annexation in 1655, the island of Jamaica was largely under Spanish control. During this time, Jamaica was not colonized as extensively as other areas of the Americas (due to the lack of precious metals, which had become the focus of Spanish expansion in the 16th) and was mostly used as a supply base for other colonization efforts. Because of this, the number of slaves brought to the island was relatively low, until Britain took control of the island and began planting on a much larger scale. Jamaica as the world's largest sugar exporter For most of the 18th century, Jamaica was Britain's most valuable colony in the Caribbean, as the British plantations focused largely on the production of cash crops; especially sugar. In the 1700s, Jamaica was the second largest sugar exporter in the world, behind the French colony of St. Domingue (Haiti); however, Haiti lost this position during the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s, at which point Jamaica emerged as the global leader. Jamaica held this title for almost three decades until the slave trade and slavery were abolished throughout the British Empire in 1807 and 1833 respectively, during which time which point Cuba quickly overtook it as the global leader. Demographic impact The vast majority of Jamaica's population at this time were African-born slaves or their ancestors; the high mortality rates and low fertility rates on Jamaica's plantations meant that slave owners had to import a high number of African captives into the colony in order to meet the output levels demanded by European consumers. There were sizeable numbers of white indentured servants, white planters, free people of color and maroons (former slaves who escaped and formed their own communities in Jamaica's interior) living in Jamaica during this century, however enslaved people made up the vast majority of Jamaica's population. Between 1607 and 1842, an estimated 1.02 million African captives disembarked in Jamaican ports, while an unknown number of slaves were imported from other areas of the Americas. The slave trade was abolished in 1807, yet the practice of slavery was not abolished until 1833 (and came into effect the following year); although no slave arrivals were recorded in these years, it is very likely that slaves continued to be smuggled into Jamaica until the mid-1800s. Today, it is estimated that approximately 98% of Jamaica's population is of African or mixed descent, the primary reason for this was the Atlantic slave trade.