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Census 2021 data on religion by economic activity status, by sex, by age, and religion by occupation, by sex, by age, England and Wales combined. This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify usual residents in England and Wales by ethnic group. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.
The religion people connect or identify with (their religious affiliation), whether or not they practise or have belief in it.
This question was voluntary and the variable includes people who answered the question, including “No religion”, alongside those who chose not to answer this question.
Total counts for some population groups may not match between published tables. This is to protect the confidentiality of individuals' data. Population counts have been rounded to the nearest 5 and any counts below 10 are suppressed, this is signified by a 'c' in the data tables.
This dataset shows population counts for usual residents aged between 16 to 64 years old only. This is to focus on religious affiliation differences among the working age. Population counts in these tables may be different from other publications which use different age breakdowns.
Quality notes can be found here
Quality information about Labour Market can be found here
The Standard Occupation Classification 2020 code used can be found here
Religion
The 8 ‘tickbox’ religious groups are as follows:
As of January 2025, approximately 35 percent of people in Great Britain said that they believed in a God / Gods, compared with 32 percent who had no belief in God / Gods at all.
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This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify Household Reference Persons aged 16 years and over in employment the week before the census in England and Wales by whether residents have identified with one or multiple religions in the household, by occupation. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.
As Census 2021 was during a unique period of rapid change, take care when using this data for planning purposes. Read more about this quality notice.
Area type
Census 2021 statistics are published for a number of different geographies. These can be large, for example the whole of England, or small, for example an output area (OA), the lowest level of geography for which statistics are produced.
For higher levels of geography, more detailed statistics can be produced. When a lower level of geography is used, such as output areas (which have a minimum of 100 persons), the statistics produced have less detail. This is to protect the confidentiality of people and ensure that individuals or their characteristics cannot be identified.
Lower tier local authorities
Lower tier local authorities provide a range of local services. There are 309 lower tier local authorities in England made up of 181 non-metropolitan districts, 59 unitary authorities, 36 metropolitan districts and 33 London boroughs (including City of London). In Wales there are 22 local authorities made up of 22 unitary authorities.
Coverage
Census 2021 statistics are published for the whole of England and Wales. However, you can choose to filter areas by:
Multiple religions in household
Classifies households by whether members identify with the same religion, no religion, did not answer the question, or a combination of these options.
This question was voluntary and the variable includes those who answered the question alongside those who chose not to.
Occupation (current)
Classifies what people aged 16 years and over do as their main job. Their job title or details of activities they do in their job and any supervisory or management responsibilities form this classification. This information is used to code responses to an occupation using the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 2020.
It classifies people who were in employment between 15 March and 21 March 2021, by the SOC code that represents their current occupation.
The lowest level of detail available is the four-digit SOC code which includes all codes in three, two and one digit SOC code levels.
This statistic presents the proportion of adults who volunteered in the last year in England, between 2012 and 2020 by religion. Over each of the survey periods, the share of respondents claiming to be Christian or of another religion tended to have a slightly higher proportion participating in voluntary work than those with no religion. In 2018/19 there were **** percent Christian respondents who had volunteered at least once in the year prior.
Open Government Licence 3.0http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
License information was derived automatically
This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify usual residents aged 16 years and over in employment the week before the census in England and Wales by occupation and by religion. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.
As Census 2021 was during a unique period of rapid change, take care when using this data for planning purposes. Read more about this quality notice.
Area type
Census 2021 statistics are published for a number of different geographies. These can be large, for example the whole of England, or small, for example an output area (OA), the lowest level of geography for which statistics are produced.
For higher levels of geography, more detailed statistics can be produced. When a lower level of geography is used, such as output areas (which have a minimum of 100 persons), the statistics produced have less detail. This is to protect the confidentiality of people and ensure that individuals or their characteristics cannot be identified.
Lower tier local authorities
Lower tier local authorities provide a range of local services. There are 309 lower tier local authorities in England made up of 181 non-metropolitan districts, 59 unitary authorities, 36 metropolitan districts and 33 London boroughs (including City of London). In Wales there are 22 local authorities made up of 22 unitary authorities.
Coverage
Census 2021 statistics are published for the whole of England and Wales. However, you can choose to filter areas by:
Occupation (current)
Classifies what people aged 16 years and over do as their main job. Their job title or details of activities they do in their job and any supervisory or management responsibilities form this classification. This information is used to code responses to an occupation using the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 2020.
It classifies people who were in employment between 15 March and 21 March 2021, by the SOC code that represents their current occupation.
The lowest level of detail available is the four-digit SOC code which includes all codes in three, two and one digit SOC code levels.
Religion
The religion people connect or identify with (their religious affiliation), whether or not they practise or have belief in it.
This question was voluntary and includes people who identified with one of 8 tick-box response options, including "No religion", alongside those who chose not to answer this question.
SUMMARYPopulation statistics at the Middle Layer Super Output Area (MSOA) level.Statistics are provided for local populations as a whole, irrespective of gender. The following statistics are provided:Age, split into discrete age bands (Office for National Statistics data, 30th June 2019 population estimates)Ethnicity (Census data, 2011)*Religion (Census data, 2011)**To increase the clarity of the data visualisations, the most frequently reported ethnicities and religions are included, with the less-frequently reported ethnicities and religions combined into suitable groups, respectively. Raw data for each MSOA can be accessed here.Data relating to gender was not included as, at present, only data relating to ‘males’ and ‘females’ are available, which is not inclusive of all genders. Following the 2021 census, data that more accurately reflects all genders are likely to be available.DATA SOURCESPopulation data: Mid-2019 (June 30) Population Estimates for Middle Layer Super Output Areas in England and Wales. © Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. © Crown Copyright 2020.Ethnicity statistics: 2011 Census: QS211EW Ethnic group (detailed), Middle Layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs) and Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in England and Wales. © Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. © Crown Copyright 2013.Religion statistics: 2011 Census: QS210EW Religion (detailed), Middle Layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs) and Lower Layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in England and Wales. © Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. © Crown Copyright 2013. MSOA boundaries: © Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2021. COPYRIGHT NOTICE© Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. © Crown Copyright 2013; © Crown Copyright 2020; © Crown copyright and database right 2021. Data edited for publishing by Ribble Rivers Trust.CaBA HEALTH & WELLBEING EVIDENCE BASEThis dataset forms part of the wider CaBA Health and Wellbeing Evidence Base.
In the United Kingdom in 2020, a majority of respondents across all age groups believed in the existence of Jesus Christ, however most of these did not believe that Jesus was the Son of God. Additionally, 15 percent of respondents believe that Jesus was a fictional character. When responses are broken down by age, almost the same share of respondents aged 16-24 believed that Jesus was the Son of God as those who believed he was fictional, whereas older respondents were much more likely to believe Jesus was the Son of God. Belief in Jesus and his role varies widely, even across Abrahamic religions, however the modern scholarly consensus is that a Jewish religious leader named Jesus did exist in the Middle East around 2,000 years ago.
Official statistics are produced impartially and free from political influence.
Open Government Licence 3.0http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
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This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify households with usual residents in England and Wales by various household characteristics, including variations in tenure by household size, household family composition, multi-generational households, and household level information on the age, ethnic group, religion, employment status and occupation of household members. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.
These datasets are part of Household characteristics by tenure, England and Wales: Census 2021, a release of results from the 2021 Census for England and Wales. Figures may differ slightly in future releases because of the impact of removing rounding and applying further statistical processes.
Total counts for some household groups may not match between published tables. This is to protect the confidentiality of households' data. Household counts have been rounded to the nearest 5 and any counts below 10 were suppressed; this is signified by a 'c' in the data tables.
This dataset uses middle layer super output area (MSOA) and lower layer super output area (LSOA) geography boundaries as of 2021 and local authority district geography boundaries as of 2022.
In this dataset, the number of households in an area is broken down by different variables and categories. If you were to sum the counts of households by each variable and category, it may not sum to the total of households in that area. This is because of rounding, suppression and that some tables only include data for certain household groups.
In this dataset, variables may have different categories for different geography levels. When variables are broken down by more categories, they may not sum to the total of the higher level categories due to rounding and suppression.
Social rent is not separated into “housing association, housing co-operative, charitable trust, registered social landlord” and “council or local authority districts” because of respondent error in identifying the type of landlord. This is particularly clear in results for areas which have no local authority districts housing stock, but there are households responding as having a “council or local authority districts” landlord type. Estimates are likely to be accurate when the social rent category is combined.
The Census Quality and Methodology Information report contains important information on:
Quality notes can be found here
Housing quality information for Census 2021 can be found here
Household
A household is defined as one person living alone, or a group of people (not necessarily related) living at the same address who share cooking facilities and a living room, sitting room or dining area. This includes all sheltered accommodation units in an establishment (irrespective of whether there are other communal facilities) and all people living in caravans on any type of site that is their usual residence; this will include anyone who has no other usual residence elsewhere in the UK. A household must contain at least one person whose place of usual residence is at the address. A group of short-term residents living together is not classified as a household, and neither is a group of people at an address where only visitors are staying.
Usual resident
For Census 2021, a usual resident of the UK is anyone who, on Census Day, was in the UK and had stayed or intended to stay in the UK for a period of 12 months or more, or had a permanent UK address and was outside the UK and intended to be outside the UK for less than 12 months.
Household reference person (HRP)
A person who serves as a reference point, mainly based on economic activity and age, to characterize a whole household. The person is not necessarily the member of the household in whose name the accommodation is owned or rented.
Tenure
Whether a household owns or rents the accommodation that it occupies. Owner-occupied accommodation can be: owned outright, which is where the household owns all of the accommodation; owned with a mortgage or loan; or part owned on a shared ownership scheme. Rented accommodation can be private rented, for example, rented through a private landlord or letting agent; social rented through a local council or housing association; or lived in rent free, which is where the household does not own the accommodation and does not pay rent to live there, for example living in a relative or friend’s property or live-in carers or nannies. This information is not available for household spaces with no usual residents.
_Household size _
The number of usual residents in the household.
Household family composition
Households according to the relationships between members. Single-family households are classified by the number of dependent children and family type (married, civil partnership or cohabiting couple family, or lone parent family). Other households are classified by the number of people, the number of dependent children and whether the household consists only of students or only of people aged 66 years and over.
Multi-generational households
Households where people from across more than two generations of the same family live together. This includes households with grandparents and grandchildren whether or not the intervening generation also live in the household.
_Household combination of resident age _
Classifies households by the ages of household members on 21 March 2021. Households could be made up of residents aged 15 years and under; residents aged 16 to 64 years; residents aged 65 years and over; or a combination of these.
Ethnic group
The ethnic group that the person completing the census feels they belong to. This could be based on their culture, family background, identity or physical appearance. Respondents could choose one out of 19 tick-box response categories, including write-in response options. For more information, see ONS's Ethnic group, England and Wales: Census 2021 bulletin
Household combination of resident ethnic group
Classifies households by the ethnic groups household members identified with.
Religion
The religion people connect or identify with (their religious affiliation), whether or not they practice or have belief in it. This question was voluntary and includes people who identified with one of 8 tick-box response options, including 'No religion', alongside those who chose not to answer this question. For more information, see ONS's Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021 bulletin
Household combination of resident religion
Classifies households by the religious affiliation of household members who chose to answer the religion question. The classifications may include residents who did not answer the religion question.
Household combination of resident employment status
Classifies households by the employment status of household members aged 16 years and over between 15 and 21 March 2021. Households could be made up of employed residents (employee or self-employed); unemployed residents (looking for work and could start within two weeks, or waiting to start a job that had been offered and accepted); economically inactive residents (unemployed and had not looked for work between 22 February to 21 March 2021, or could not start work within two weeks); or a combination of these.
Occupation
"Classifies what people aged 16 years and over do as their main job. Their job title or details of activities they do in their job and any supervisory or management responsibilities form this classification. This information is used to code responses to an occupation using the Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) 2020. It classifies people who were in employment between 15 March and 21 March 2021, by the SOC code that represents their current occupation. The lowest level of detail available is the four-digit SOC code which includes all codes in three, two and one digit SOC code levels. Occupation classifications include :
This statistic presents the proportion of adults who engaged with the arts in the last year in England between 2012 and 2020, by religion. Arts engagement refers to attending and/or participating in the arts sector, such as visiting an art gallery or participating in a theatre performance. In 2019/20, 78 percent of Christian respondents said they had engaged in at least one art event or activity in the previous year.
Between November 2020 and November 2021, it was found that **** percent of the Christian respondents attended at least two live sports events in the last year. More information about sports in England can be found in the Dossier: Sport in England - Public funding and participation.
A revision was made on 20th January 2022 to add the volume of prisoners holding a Gender Recognition Certificate.
The Equality Act 2010 lists 9 Protected Characteristics:
This report focuses on those protected characteristics where data are collected, and are of sufficient quality for statistics to be meaningful. In general, this report is limited to analysis on sex, age, race (ethnicity) and religious belief for these reasons. Where data are available for other protected characteristics at sufficient quality and with sufficient coverage to be meaningful, they are also presented and considered.
The report presents some analysis by individual characteristic and is meant to serve as a guide for further research. In many cases, more than one factor (e.g. age and another protected characteristic, criminal history, socio-economic) may have an effect on an outcome.
The HMPPS Offender Equalities Report is produced and handled by the Ministry of Justice’s (MOJ) analytical professionals and production staff. Pre-release access of up to 24 hours is granted to the following persons:
Background:
The Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) is a large-scale, multi-purpose longitudinal dataset providing information about babies born at the beginning of the 21st century, their progress through life, and the families who are bringing them up, for the four countries of the United Kingdom. The original objectives of the first MCS survey, as laid down in the proposal to the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) in March 2000, were:
Further information about the MCS can be found on the Centre for Longitudinal Studies web pages.
The content of MCS studies, including questions, topics and variables can be explored via the CLOSER Discovery website.
International Data Access Network (IDAN)
These data are now available to researchers based outside the UK. Selected UKDS SecureLab/controlled datasets from the Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER) and the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS) have been made available under the International Data Access Network (IDAN) scheme, via a Safe Room access point at one of the UKDS IDAN partners. Prospective users should read the UKDS SecureLab application guide for non-ONS data for researchers outside of the UK via Safe Room Remote Desktop Access. Further details about the IDAN scheme can be found on the UKDS International Data Access Network webpage and on the IDAN website.
From 2022 to 2060, the worldwide population of Muslims is expected to increase by 45.7 percent. For the same period, the global population of Buddhists is expected to decrease by 12.2 percent.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/whatwedo/statistics/requestingstatistics/approvedresearcherschemehttps://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/whatwedo/statistics/requestingstatistics/approvedresearcherscheme
The Public Health Research Database (PHRD) is a linked asset which currently includes Census 2011 data; Mortality Data; Hospital Episode Statistics (HES); GP Extraction Service (GPES) Data for Pandemic Planning and Research data. Researchers may apply for these datasets individually or any combination of the current 4 datasets.
The purpose of this dataset is to enable analysis of deaths involving COVID-19 by multiple factors such as ethnicity, religion, disability and known comorbidities as well as age, sex, socioeconomic and marital status at subnational levels. 2011 Census data for usual residents of England and Wales, who were not known to have died by 1 January 2020, linked to death registrations for deaths registered between 1 January 2020 and 8 March 2021 on NHS number. The data exclude individuals who entered the UK in the year before the Census took place (due to their high propensity to have left the UK prior to the study period), and those over 100 years of age at the time of the Census, even if their death was not linked. The dataset contains all individuals who died (any cause) during the study period, and a 5% simple random sample of those still alive at the end of the study period. For usual residents of England, the dataset also contains comorbidity flags derived from linked Hospital Episode Statistics data from April 2017 to December 2019 and GP Extraction Service Data from 2015-2019.
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In the 3 years to March 2021, white British families were the most likely to receive a type of state support.
Sikhism is a religion that originated on the Indian subcontinent during the fifteenth century. Sikhs follow the teachings of 'gurus', who descend from the first guru Guru Naruk who established the faith. Followers of Sikhism are monotheists, believing in only one god, and other core beliefs include the need to meditate, the importance of community and communal living, and the need to serve humanity selflessly (or 'seva'). Sikhism and the British Empire In total, there are around 26 million Sikhs worldwide, and over 24 million of these live in India. Outside of India, the largest Sikh populations are mostly found in former territories of the British Empire - the UK and Canada both have Sikh populations of over half a million people. Migration from India to other parts of the British Empire was high in the 19th century, due to the labor demands of relatively newer colonies, as well as those where slavery had been abolished. These countries also remain popular destinations for Sikh migrants today, as many are highly trained and English-speaking. Other regions with significant Sikh populations Italy also has a sizeable Sikh population, as many migrated there after serving there in the British Army during WWI, and they are now heavily represented in Italy's dairy industry. The Sikh population of Saudi Arabia is also reflective of the fact that the largest Indian diaspora in the world can now be found in the Middle East - this is due to the labor demands of the fossil fuel industries and their associated secondary industries, although a large share of Indians in this part of the world are there on a temporary basis.
In 2022, approximately 207,004 marriages took place via a civil ceremony in England and Wales, compared with 41,915 religious ceremonies. Since 1992, there have been more civil ceremonies in every year than religious ones. There were far fewer ceremonies taking place in 2020 due to the COVID-19 lockdowns at the time.
In 2023, the average weekly church attendance at Church of England services was 693,000. Between 2009 and 2019 the average weekly church attendance for the Church of England fell by approximately 218,000. Church attendance figures fell even more during 2020 and 2021, although this was due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Opinions and Lifestyle Survey (OPN) is an omnibus survey that collects data from respondents in Great Britain. Information is gathered on a range of subjects, commissioned both internally by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) and by external clients (other government departments, charities, non-profit organisations and academia).
One individual respondent, aged 16 or over, is selected from each sampled private household to answer questions. Data are gathered on the respondent, their family, address, household, income and education, plus responses and opinions on a variety of subjects within commissioned modules. Each regular OPN survey consists of two elements. Core questions, covering demographic information, are asked together with non-core questions that vary depending on the module(s) fielded.
The OPN collects timely data for research and policy analysis evaluation on the social impacts of recent topics of national importance, such as the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic and the cost of living. The OPN has expanded to include questions on other topics of national importance, such as health and the cost of living.
For more information about the survey and its methodology, see the gov.uk OPN Quality and Methodology Information (QMI) webpage.
Changes over time
Up to March 2018, the OPN was conducted as a face-to-face survey. From April 2018 to November 2019, the OPN changed to a mixed-mode design (online first with telephone interviewing where necessary). Mixed-mode collection allows respondents to complete the survey more flexibly and provides a more cost-effective service for module customers.
In March 2020, the OPN was adapted to become a weekly survey used to collect data on the social impacts of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic on the lives of people of Great Britain. These data are held under Secure Access conditions in SN 8635, ONS Opinions and Lifestyle Survey, 2019-2023: Secure Access. (See below for information on other Secure Access OPN modules.)
From August 2021, as coronavirus (COVID-19) restrictions were lifted across Great Britain, the OPN moved to fortnightly data collection, sampling around 5,000 households in each survey wave to ensure the survey remained sustainable.
Secure Access OPN modules
Besides SN 8635 (which includes the COVID-19 Module), other Secure Access OPN data includes sensitive modules run at various points from 1997-2019, including Census religion (SN 8078), cervical cancer screening (SN 8080), contact after separation (SN 8089), contraception (SN 8095), disability (SNs 8680 and 8096), general lifestyle (SN 8092), illness and activity (SN 8094), and non-resident parental contact (SN 8093). See the individual studies for further details and information on how to apply to use them.
Open Government Licence 3.0http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3/
License information was derived automatically
Census 2021 data on religion by economic activity status, by sex, by age, and religion by occupation, by sex, by age, England and Wales combined. This dataset provides Census 2021 estimates that classify usual residents in England and Wales by ethnic group. The estimates are as at Census Day, 21 March 2021.
The religion people connect or identify with (their religious affiliation), whether or not they practise or have belief in it.
This question was voluntary and the variable includes people who answered the question, including “No religion”, alongside those who chose not to answer this question.
Total counts for some population groups may not match between published tables. This is to protect the confidentiality of individuals' data. Population counts have been rounded to the nearest 5 and any counts below 10 are suppressed, this is signified by a 'c' in the data tables.
This dataset shows population counts for usual residents aged between 16 to 64 years old only. This is to focus on religious affiliation differences among the working age. Population counts in these tables may be different from other publications which use different age breakdowns.
Quality notes can be found here
Quality information about Labour Market can be found here
The Standard Occupation Classification 2020 code used can be found here
Religion
The 8 ‘tickbox’ religious groups are as follows: