In 2024, the population of the United Kingdom reached 69.3 million, compared with 68.5 million in 2023. The UK population has more than doubled since 1871 when just under 31.5 million lived in the UK and has grown by around 10.4 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 58.6 million people in 2024. By comparison, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland had populations of 5.5 million, 3.2 million, and 1.9 million, respectively. Within England, South East England had the largest population, at over 9.6 million, followed by the UK's vast capital city of London, at almost 9.1 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.

In 2024, there were estimated to be 976,481 people who were aged 33 in the United Kingdom, the most of any age in this year. The two largest age groups during this year were 30-34, and 35-39, at 4.8 million and 4.78 million people respectively. There is also a noticeable spike of 673,831 people who were aged 77, which is due to the high number of births that followed the end of the Second World War. Over one million born in 1964 In post-war Britain, there have only been two years when the number of live births was over one million, in 1947 and in 1964. The number of births recorded in the years between these two years was consistently high as well, with 1955 having the fewest births in this period at 789,000. This meant that until relatively recently, Baby Boomers were the largest generational cohort in the UK. As of 2024, there were approximately 13.4 million Baby Boomers, compared with 14 million in Generation X, 15 million Millennials, and 13.6 million members of Gen Z. The youngest generation in the UK, Generation Alpha, numbered approximately 9.2 million in the same year. Median age to hit 44.5 years by 2050 The population of the United Kingdom is aging at a substantial rate, with the median age of the population expected to reach 44.5 years by 2050. By comparison, in 1950 the average age in the United Kingdom stood at 34.9 years. This phenomenon is not unique to the United Kingdom, with median age of people worldwide increasing from 23.6 years in 1950 to a forecasted 41.9 years by 2100. As of 2024, the region with the oldest median age in the UK was South West England, at 43.7 years, compared with 35.7 in London, the region with the youngest median age.

National and subnational mid-year population estimates for the UK and its constituent countries by administrative area, age and sex (including components of population change, median age and population density).

There were almost 4.8 million people aged between 30 and 34 in the United Kingdom in 2024, making it the most populous age group in that year. Those aged between 35 and 39 years comprised the next most numerous age group in this year, at over 4.78 million people. Millennials overtake Boomers as biggest generation Post-war demographic trends, particularly the 'baby boom' phenomenon, have significantly influenced the current age distribution in the UK. The postwar peak of live births in 1947 resulted in the dominance of the Baby Boomer generation for several decades, until 2020 when Millennials became the largest generational cohort, surpassing the Boomers for the first time. The following year, the UK Boomer population was then overtaken by Generation X, the generation born between Boomers and Millennials. Generation Z, remained smaller than the three generations that preceded it until 2024 when there were more Gen Zers than Boomers. Aging UK population poses challenges The median age of the UK population is projected to reach 44.5 years by 2050, compared to 34.9 years in 1950. This aging trend is indicative of broader global demographic shifts, with the median age of people worldwide forecasted to increase from 23.6 years in 1950 to 41.9 years by 2100. How countries like the UK manage their aging populations will be one of the key challenges of the next few decades. It is likely the UK's struggling National Health Service (NHS) will come under even more pressure in the coming years. There are also tough economic questions, in particular as more people enter retirement age and the UK's working population gets smaller in relation to it.

According to the 2021 Census, 81.7% of the population of England and Wales was white, 9.3% Asian, 4.0% black, 2.9% mixed and 2.1% from other ethnic groups.

The population of England was estimated to have reached almost 58.6 million in 2024, compared with 54.4 million ten years earlier in 2013. Compared with 1971, the population of England has grown by over 12 million.

The population of the United Kingdom in 2024 was estimated to be approximately 69.3 million, with over 9.6 million people living in South East England. London had the next highest population, at almost 9.1 million people, followed by the North West England at 7.7 million. With the UK's population generally concentrated in England, most English regions have larger populations than the constituent countries of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, which had populations of 5.5 million, 3.2 million, and 1.9 million respectively. English counties and cities The United Kingdom is a patchwork of various regional units, within England the largest of these are the regions shown here, which show how London, along with the rest of South East England had around 18 million people living there in this year. The next significant regional units in England are the 47 metropolitan and ceremonial counties. After London, the metropolitan counties of the West Midlands, Greater Manchester, and West Yorkshire were the biggest of these counties, due to covering the large urban areas of Birmingham, Manchester, and Leeds respectively. Regional divisions in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland The smaller countries that comprise the United Kingdom each have different local subdivisions. Within Scotland these are called council areas, whereas in Wales the main regional units are called unitary authorities. Scotland's largest Council Area by population is that of Glasgow City at over 650,000, while in Wales, it was the Cardiff Unitary Authority at around 384,000. Northern Ireland, on the other hand, has eleven local government districts, the largest of which is Belfast with a population of approxiamtely 352,000.

According to the 2021 Census, London was the most ethnically diverse region in England and Wales – 63.2% of residents identified with an ethnic minority group.

Annual UK and constituent country figures for births, deaths, marriages, divorces, civil partnerships and civil partnership dissolutions.

The latest population figures produced by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on 28 June 2018 show that an estimated 534,800 people live in Bradford District – an increase of 2,300 people (0.4%) since the previous year. Bradford District is the fifth largest metropolitan district (in terms of population) in England, after Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield and Manchester although the District’s population growth is lower than other major cities. The increase in the District’s population is largely due to “natural change”- there have been around 3,300 more births than deaths, although this has been balanced by a larger number of people leaving Bradford to live in other parts of the UK than coming to live here and a lower number of international migrants. In 2016/17 the net internal migration was -2,700 and the net international migration was 1,700. A large proportion of Bradford’s population is dominated by the younger age groups. More than one-quarter (29%) of the District’s population is aged less than 20 and nearly seven in ten people are aged less than 50. Bradford has the highest percentage of the under 16 population in England after the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham, Slough Borough Council and Luton Borough Council. The population of Bradford is ethnically diverse. The largest proportion of the district’s population (63.9%) identifies themselves as White British. The district has the largest proportion of people of Pakistani ethnic origin (20.3%) in England. The largest religious group in Bradford is Christian (45.9% of the population). Nearly one quarter of the population (24.7%) are Muslim. Just over one fifth of the district’s population (20.7%) stated that they had no religion. There are 216,813 households in the Bradford district. Most households own their own home (29.3% outright and 35.7% with a mortgage). The percentage of privately rented households is 18.1%. 29.6% of households were single person households. Information from the Annual Population Survey in December 2017 found that Bradford has 228,100 people aged 16-64 in employment. At 68% this is significantly lower than the national rate (74.9%). 91,100 (around 1 in 3 people) aged 16-64, are not in work. The claimant count rate is 2.9% which is higher than the regional and national averages. Skill levels are improving with 26.5% of 16 to 74 year olds educated to degree level. 18% of the district’s employed residents work in retail/wholesale. The percentage of people working in manufacturing has continued to decrease from 13.4% in 2009 to 11.9% in 2016. This is still higher than the average for Great Britain (8.1%).

This dataset contains information on population counts in experimental populations of Plodia interpunctella (Pyralidae; Hübner) and the parasitoid wasp Venturia canescens (Ichneumonidae; Gravenhorst). The data was collected from a multi-generation microcosm experiment carried out to characterise the combined effects of daily stochastic temperature fluctuations and resource degradation on population responses in the Plodia-Venturia host-parasitoid trophic interaction. The population count data include the weekly total numbers of dead adult hosts and parasitoids and the numbers of live early (L1-L3) and late (L4-L5) host instars and of host and parasitoid pupae in half sections of diet removed weekly and replaced by fresh diet (half sections are a 12th of experimental population boxes). The temperature time series data include the date and daily temperature in the fluctuating temperatures treatment.

The census is undertaken by the Office for National Statistics every 10 years and gives us a picture of all the people and households in England and Wales. The most recent census took place in March of 2021.The census asks every household questions about the people who live there and the type of home they live in. In doing so, it helps to build a detailed snapshot of society. Information from the census helps the government and local authorities to plan and fund local services, such as education, doctors' surgeries and roads.Key census statistics for Leicester are published on the open data platform to make information accessible to local services, voluntary and community groups, and residents. There is also a dashboard published showcasing various datasets from the census allowing users to view data for Leicester and compare this with national statistics.Further information about the census and full datasets can be found on the ONS website - https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/aboutcensus/censusproductsPopulation by household and communal establishmentThis dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify the population into residents of households and those residing in communal establishments. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.Definitions: Households - one person or a group of people (not necessarily related) living at the same address who share cooking facilities and share a living room or sitting room, or dining area. Examples include: A house or flatA caravan or other mobile or temporary structureSheltered accommodation units within an establishmentCommunal establishments - A place that provides managed full-time or part-time supervision of residential accommodation. Examples include:University halls of residence and boarding schoolsCare homes, hospitals, hospices and maternity unitsPrisons and other secure facilitiesNew communal establishments do not count as new households. For example, the building of a new block of supervised student flats would not count as an increase in the number of households.

Presents annual statistics on conceptions to women aged under 18 usually resident in England and Wales. It covers conception counts and conception rates for women of all ages, split by area of usual residence. Conception statistics include either a termination by abortion or a maternity at which one or more live births or stillbirths occur. Maternities which result in one or more live/stillbirths are counted only once.

Source agency: Office for National Statistics

Designation: National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Annual Conceptions to Women aged under 18, England and Wales

Presents provisional annual statistics on conceptions to women usually resident in England and Wales. It covers conception counts and conception rates for women of all ages, including outcome, martial status and area of usual residence. Conception statistics include either a termination by abortion or a maternity at which one or more live births or stillbirths occur. Maternities which result in one or more live/stillbirths are counted only once.

Source agency: Office for National Statistics

Designation: National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Conception summary tables, England and Wales (provisional)

This dataset contains a variety of demographic measures (related to fertility, marriage, mortality and migration), plus a range of socio-economic indicators (related to households, age structure, and social class) for the 2000+ Registration Sub Districts (RSDs) in England and Wales for each census year between 1851 and 1911, and for the 600+ Registration Districts of Scotland 1851-1901. The measures have mainly been derived from the computerised individual level census enumerators' books (and household schedules for 1911) enhanced under the I-CeM project. I-CeM does not currently include data for England and Wales 1871, although the project has been able to access a version of the data for that year it does not contain information necessary to calculate many of the variables presented here. Scotland 1911 is also not available. Users should therefore beware that 1871 does not contain data for many of the variables. Additional data has been derived from the tables summarising numbers of births and deaths by year and areas, which were published by the Registrar General of England and Wales in his quarterly, annual and decennial reports of births, deaths and marriages. Data from the decennial reports was obtained from Woods (SN 3552) and we transcribed data from the quarterly and annual reports ourselves. Counts of births and deaths for Scottish Registration Districts were obtained from the Digitising Scotland project at the University of Edinburgh. The dataset builds on SN 8613 and SN 853547 which provide data for a more limited set of variables and for England and Wales only (the same dataset also has two UKDS SN numbers as it was re-routed by UKDS during the deposit process).

This project will present the first historic population geography of Great Britain during the late nineteenth century. This was a period of unprecedented demographic change, when both mortality and fertility started the dramatic secular declines of the first demographic transition. National trends are well established: mortality decline started in childhood and early adulthood, with infant mortality lagging behind, particularly in urban-industrial areas. The fall in fertility was led by the middle classes but quickly spread throughout society. Urban growth was fuelled by movement from the countryside to the city, but there was also considerable migration overseas, particularly from Scotland, although to some extent outmigration was offset by immigration. There was local and regional variation in these patterns, and a contrast between the demographic experiences of Scotland and of England and Wales. Marriage was later in Scotland but fertility within marriage higher, and the improvement in Scottish mortality was slower than that south of the border. However, while there has been research on local and regional patterns within each country, these have mainly been pursued separately, and it is therefore unclear whether there were real national differences or whether there were local demographic continuities across borders, and if so whether they followed economic, occupational, cultural or even linguistic lines. Understanding population processes involves a holistic appreciation of the interaction between the basic demographic components of fertility, mortality, nuptiality and migration, and how they come together, interacting with economic and cultural processes, to create a specific demographic system via the spread of people and ideas. This project is the first to consider a historical population geography of the whole of Great Britain across the first demographic transition, drawing together measures of nuptiality, fertility, mortality and migration for small geographic areas and unpacking how they interacted to produce the more readily available broad-brush national patterns for Scotland and for England and Wales.

We will build on our immensely successful project on the fertility of Victorian England and Wales, which used complete count census data for England and Wales to calculate more detailed fertility measures than ever previously possible for some 2000 small geographic areas and 8 social groups, allowing the investigation of intra-urban as well as urban-rural differences in fertility. The new measures allowed us to examine age patterns of fertility across the two countries for the first time. We were also able to calculate contextual variables from the census data which allowed us to undertake spatial analysis of the influences on fertility over time. As well as academic papers, our previous project presented summary data at a fine spatial resolution in an interactive online atlas, populationspast.org, a major new resource which is already being widely used as a teaching tool in both schools and universities.

In this new project we will calculate comparable measures of fertility and contextual variables using the full count census data for Scotland, 1851 to 1901 inclusive, to complement those for England and Wales. However, our new project will go considerably further and will integrate place-specific measures of mortality and migration, for both Scotland and for England and Wales. We will provide new age-specific data on fertility, mortality and migration for the whole of Great Britain using existing datasets, at a finer geographic level than has previously been possible, and will analyse these spatially and temporally to gain a panoramic understanding of the forces driving this crucial period of demographic and social change. We will expand populationspast.org to bring our new findings to a wide academic and non-academic audience and will provide the data for others to explore interactively.

DATASET: Alpha version 2014 estimates of number of people in each 5-year age group per grid square, with national totals adjusted to match UN population division estimates (http://esa.un.org/wpp/). REGION: Africa SPATIAL RESOLUTION: 0.00833333 decimal degrees (approx 100m at the equator) PROJECTION: Geographic, WGS84 UNITS: Estimated number of people in each 5-year age group per grid square MAPPING APPROACH: Land cover based, as described in: Linard, C., Gilbert, M., Snow, R.W., Noor, A.M. and Tatem, A.J., 2012, Population distribution, settlement patterns and accessibility across Africa in 2010, PLoS ONE, 7(2): e31743. 5-YEAR AGE PROPORTIONS: Tatem, Andrew J., Garcia, Andres J., Snow, Robert W., Noor, Abdisalan M., Gaughan, Andrea E.,Gilbert, Marius and Linard, Catherine, 2013, Millennium development health metrics: where do Africa's children and women of childbearing age live? Population Health Metrics, 11, (1), 11. FORMAT: Geotiff (zipped using 7-zip (open access tool): www.7-zip.org) FILENAMES: Example - BEN14_A0005_adjv1 = Benin (BEN) population count between 0 and 5 years old map (A0005) for 2014 (14) adjusted to match UN national estimates (adj), version 1 (v1). DATE OF PRODUCTION: August 2014

Statistics on live and still births occurring annually in England and Wales. Statistics for births in previous years are included to show trends in fertility. It also covers birth counts and birth rates tabulated by, among other attributes, parents' age, occurrence within or outside marriage, multiple births, mother's area of residence and country of birth, place of confinement, and father's social class (defined by occupation).

Source agency: Office for National Statistics

Designation: National Statistics

Language: English

Alternative title: Birth statistics, England and Wales (Series FM1)

Mid-year (30 June) estimates of the usual resident population for Lower layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in England and Wales by single year of age and sex.

Live births and stillbirths annual summary statistics, by sex, age of mother, whether within marriage or civil partnership, percentage of non-UK-born mothers, birth rates and births by month and mothers' area of usual residence.