tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/uk-population-28348/articlesUK population – The Conversation2024-02-08T00:13:16Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2198122024-02-08T00:13:16Z2024-02-08T00:13:16ZPopulation can’t be ignored. It has to be part of the policy solution to our world’s problems<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571345/original/file-20240125-25-ep3bs0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3544%2C2352&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/planet-earth-big-city-view-highest-575859517">Marina Poushkina/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>There is a growing consensus that environmental problems, particularly the effects of climate change, pose a grave challenge to humanity. Pollution, habitat destruction, intractable waste issues and, for many, deteriorating quality of life should be added to the list.</p>
<p>Economic growth is the chief culprit. We forget, though, that environmental impacts are a consequence of per capita consumption multiplied by the number of people doing the consuming. Our own numbers matter. </p>
<p>Population growth threatens environments at global, national and regional scales. Yet the policy agenda either ignores human population, or <a href="https://treasury.gov.au/sites/default/files/2023-08/p2023-435150.pdf">fosters alarm</a> when perfectly natural trends such as declining fertility and longer lifespans cause growth rates to fall and populations to age.</p>
<p>That there are still too many of us is a problem few want to talk about. Fifty years ago, population was <a href="https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/the-limits-to-growth/">considered to be an issue</a>, not only for the developing world, but for the planet as a whole. Since then, the so-called green revolution in agriculture made it possible to feed many more people. But the costs of these practices, which relied heavily on pesticide and fertiliser use and relatively few crops, are only now beginning to be understood. </p>
<p>The next 30 years will be critical. The most recent <a href="https://population.un.org/wpp/">United Nations projections</a> point to a global population of 9.7 billion by 2050 and 10.4 billion by 2100. There are 8 billion of us now. Another 2 billion will bring already stressed ecosystems to the point of collapse. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571346/original/file-20240125-29-qgaznz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A line graph showing global population growth since 1950 and projection to 2100." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571346/original/file-20240125-29-qgaznz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571346/original/file-20240125-29-qgaznz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571346/original/file-20240125-29-qgaznz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571346/original/file-20240125-29-qgaznz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571346/original/file-20240125-29-qgaznz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571346/original/file-20240125-29-qgaznz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571346/original/file-20240125-29-qgaznz.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The latest global population projection from the United Nations.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Line/900">UN World Population Prospects 2022</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>It’s the whole world’s problem</h2>
<p>Many would agree overpopulation is a problem in many developing countries, where large families keep people poor. But there are too many of us in the developed world, too. Per person, people in high-income countries <a href="https://populationmatters.org/the-facts-resources-consumption/">consume 60% more resources</a> than in upper-middle-income countries and more than 13 times as much as people in low-income countries.</p>
<p>From 1995 to 2020, the UK population, for example, grew by 9.1 million. A crowded little island, particularly around London and the south-east, became more crowded still. </p>
<p>Similarly, the Netherlands, <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.DNST?most_recent_value_desc=true&view=map">one of the most densely populated countries</a>, had just under 10 million inhabitants in 1950 and 17.6 million in 2020. In the 1950s, the government encouraged emigration to reduce population densities. By the 21st century, another 5 million people in a tiny country certainly caused opposition to immigration, but concern was wrongly focused on the ethnic composition of the increase. The principal problem of overpopulation received little attention. </p>
<p>Australia is celebrated as “a land of boundless plains to share”. In reality it’s a small country that consists of big distances. </p>
<p>As former NSW Premier Bob Carr <a href="https://fac.flinders.edu.au/dspace/api/core/bitstreams/6734a834-4409-46fb-b92c-3a7aec8e76d1/content">predicted</a> some years ago, as Australia’s population swelled, the extra numbers would be housed in spreading suburbs that would gobble up farmland nearest our cities and threaten coastal and near-coastal habitats. How right he was. The outskirts of Sydney and Melbourne are carpeted in big, ugly houses whose inhabitants will be forever car-dependent. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="An aerial view of city suburbs stretching out to the horizon" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571348/original/file-20240125-27-jhtqbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571348/original/file-20240125-27-jhtqbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571348/original/file-20240125-27-jhtqbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571348/original/file-20240125-27-jhtqbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571348/original/file-20240125-27-jhtqbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571348/original/file-20240125-27-jhtqbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571348/original/file-20240125-27-jhtqbj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Non-stop growth means our cities are becoming less efficient and liveable.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/aerial-view-urban-sprawl-along-rapidly-1977700022">Harley Kingston/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Doing nothing has a high cost</h2>
<p>The longer we do nothing about population growth, the worse it gets. More people now inevitably mean more in the future than there would otherwise have been. </p>
<p>We live very long lives, on average, so once we’re born, we tend to stick around. It takes a while for falling birthrates to have any impact. </p>
<p>And when they do, the population boosters respond with cries of alarm. The norm is seen as a young or youngish population, while the elderly are presented as a parasitical drag upon the young. </p>
<p>Falling reproduction rates should not be regarded as a disaster but as a natural occurrence to which we can adapt. </p>
<p>Recently, we have been told Australia must have high population growth, because of workforce shortages. It is rarely stated exactly what these shortages are, and why we cannot train enough people to fill them. </p>
<p>Population and development are connected in subtle ways, at global, national and regional scales. At each level, stabilising the population holds the key to a more environmentally secure and equitable future. </p>
<p>For those of us who value the natural world for its own sake, the matter is clear – we should make room for other species. For those who do not care about other species, the reality is that without a more thoughtful approach to our own numbers, planetary systems will continue to break down.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571349/original/file-20240125-17-fslren.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Line graph showing the probabilities of global population projections and the impacts of having 0.5 more or less children per woman" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571349/original/file-20240125-17-fslren.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/571349/original/file-20240125-17-fslren.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571349/original/file-20240125-17-fslren.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571349/original/file-20240125-17-fslren.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571349/original/file-20240125-17-fslren.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571349/original/file-20240125-17-fslren.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/571349/original/file-20240125-17-fslren.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=565&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Cutting births by just 0.5 children per woman can dramatically reduce the level at which the world’s population peaks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/Probabilistic/POP/TOT/900">UN World Population Prospects 2022</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Let women choose to have fewer children</h2>
<p>So, what to do? If we assume the Earth’s population is going to exceed 10 billion, the type of thinking behind this assumption means we are sleepwalking our way into a nightmarish future when a better one is within our grasp.</p>
<p>A radical rethink of the global economy is needed to address climate change. In relation to population growth, if we can move beyond unhelpful ideologies, the solution is already available. </p>
<p>People are not stupid. In particular, women are not stupid. Where women are given the choice, they restrict the number of children they have. This freedom is as basic a human right as you can get. </p>
<p>A much-needed demographic transition could be under way right now, if only the population boosters would let it happen. </p>
<p>Those who urge greater rates of reproduction, whether they realise it or not, are serving only the short-term interests of developers and some religious authorities, for whom big societies mean more power for themselves. It is a masculinist fantasy for which most women, and many men, have long been paying a huge price. </p>
<p>Women will show the way, if only we would let them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/219812/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jenny Stewart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Most of the problems confronting the world come down to population growth. But where women are given the choice, they limit the number of children they have.Jenny Stewart, Professor of Public Policy, ADFA Canberra, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2205502024-01-08T12:09:25Z2024-01-08T12:09:25ZWhy the UK census should not be replaced with alternative sources of data<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/567903/original/file-20240104-29-h79e1i.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/timelapse-photography-of-big-ben-the-clock-lPoEqodfh-o">Hert Niks|Unsplash</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Every ten years since 1801 – save for a wartime interruption in 1941 – the UK government has conducted a national census of England and Wales. This is a big event. The data collated in the last survey, <a href="https://theconversation.com/census-2021-will-reveal-how-a-year-of-lockdowns-and-furlough-has-transformed-the-uk-157337">in 2021</a>, is still being published, with final reports only scheduled for 2025. Yet, doubts have emerged about whether the next one – in 2031 – will actually take place. </p>
<p>The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is currently preparing recommendations on the back of a public consultation about the future of population and migration statistics in England and Wales, conducted over four months in 2023. Scholars have <a href="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/john.armstrong/openletters/letter.php?campaign=future_of_population_statistics">expressed concern</a> that the government intends to scrap the census altogether, in favour of using other, administrative sources of population data.</p>
<p>The issue is not whether administrative data can supplement census data – it undoubtedly can. However, the 85 scholars, signatories to an <a href="https://nms.kcl.ac.uk/john.armstrong/openletters/letter.php?campaign=future_of_population_statistics">open letter published</a> in October 2023, say that the government has not convincingly made the argument for administrative data being able to replace all the functions of the census. </p>
<p>They argue that using only alternative sources of information without the census to compare them against could ultimately lead to inaccuracies. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Three men, a woman and a dog." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568024/original/file-20240105-25-ilmaxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568024/original/file-20240105-25-ilmaxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568024/original/file-20240105-25-ilmaxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568024/original/file-20240105-25-ilmaxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568024/original/file-20240105-25-ilmaxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568024/original/file-20240105-25-ilmaxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568024/original/file-20240105-25-ilmaxr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The census has long helped academics unpick the nation’s demographics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/a-group-of-people-standing-next-to-a-brick-wall-B74kk9bHKUE">Zach Rowlandson|Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>An unparalleled resource</h2>
<p>The ten-yearly census aims to collect information about everyone who is resident on census night, the last of which was <a href="https://theconversation.com/census-2021-why-its-important-to-take-part-and-what-happens-to-your-information-156684">March 21, 2021</a>, in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and a year later (March 20, 2022) in Scotland, where it had been delayed due to COVID-19. It is this ambition to collect data about the complete population that makes the census so unique, unparalleled by much smaller social surveys. </p>
<p>The data collected in this way is crucial to understanding the <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-divorcees-to-fuller-classrooms-the-1921-census-of-england-and-wales-depicts-an-era-of-great-change-174993">changing social and demographic geographies</a> of the UK. It is used by organisations, businesses, local authorities and academics to inform business and service planning, to map who is living where and to allocate funds in response to changing demands and needs.</p>
<p>But collecting it, then processing, storing and publishing it, is expensive. The ONS puts the cost of the 2021 census at around <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/2021censuscostsdatasharingfinesdatasecurityandquestions">£900 million</a>. That may only work out at £1.50 per person, but it is still a large sum of money – one that has not escaped the notice of the governments that fund it. </p>
<p>As well as the finances, there are also questions around the survey’s efficacy, when multiple organisations already gather citizen data as a matter of routine. As National Statistician for England and Wales Ian Diamond <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/03/out-for-the-count-has-britain-already-conducted-its-last-census">has put it</a>, “We have reached a point where a serious question can be asked about the role the census plays in our statistical system.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Workers add red hearts on the Covid memorial wall in London." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568026/original/file-20240105-15-ds4sn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568026/original/file-20240105-15-ds4sn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568026/original/file-20240105-15-ds4sn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568026/original/file-20240105-15-ds4sn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568026/original/file-20240105-15-ds4sn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568026/original/file-20240105-15-ds4sn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568026/original/file-20240105-15-ds4sn7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">COVID saw the 2021 census delayed in Scotland.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/man-in-black-and-white-jacket-standing-beside-woman-in-black-and-white-jacket-MWmFIFGARFQ">Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona|Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Alternative sources</h2>
<p>The first question that arises is whether a form of data collection that originated in the 19th century might be radically modernised in the 21st. There have, of course, been changes to the census over the decades. Most of the data is now collected and disseminated electronically rather than on paper. There are also ever more ways to freely explore and visualise the data. </p>
<p>Further, the questions the census ask are updated over time. In 1991, an ethnicity question was included and, in 2001, a religious affiliation question was added. In 2021, changes were made to the gender identity variable. </p>
<p>The more important issue, however, is whether, in an era when other data about people and places is routinely collected by public (and private) organisations, we need the census at all. </p>
<p>The ONS’s <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/the-future-of-population-and-migration-statistics-in-england-and-wales">consultation document</a>, entitled “The future of population and migration statistics in England and Wales”, suggests that various sources of administrative data can be linked and collated to create what is, in effect, a pseudo-census. This is <a href="https://theconversation.com/scrapping-the-census-in-2014-would-be-a-disaster-21631">not a new idea</a>. </p>
<p>Usefully, there is no reason to restrict these linkages to a ten-yearly cycle of updates. We could have more timely data reflecting changes to society as they happen, instead of waiting a decade or more for the next census to collect the data and make it available for analysis. That would be extremely useful for studying, understanding and mapping social and demographic change.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A crowd on a lawn." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568030/original/file-20240105-18-b3k3a8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568030/original/file-20240105-18-b3k3a8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568030/original/file-20240105-18-b3k3a8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568030/original/file-20240105-18-b3k3a8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568030/original/file-20240105-18-b3k3a8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568030/original/file-20240105-18-b3k3a8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568030/original/file-20240105-18-b3k3a8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Organisations now routinely gather citizen data.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/a-crowd-of-people-standing-in-front-of-a-castle-pzIMfSkzcRI">Benjamin Elliott|Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Potential for inaccuracy</h2>
<p>A lot of effort has been made by the ONS to explore what it terms “census alternatives” and to understand their potential advantages and disadvantages. </p>
<p>However, assuming that the census is the gold standard of population statistics – not perfect, but with data that provides information on all neighbourhoods in the UK and their populations – then, without that standard, it becomes harder to calibrate other sources of data and ensure that what they measure is an accurate reflection of social patterns and trends. </p>
<p>Imagine, for example, that we used the <a href="https://www.find-npd-data.education.gov.uk/">national pupil database</a> to estimate the ethnic composition of neighbourhoods. As it records which schools pupils attend and which ethnic group they belong to, this very rich source of data has been used to show that ethnic segregation – the possibility that different ethnic groups choose different schools from one another – <a href="https://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/ethnic-segregation-between-schools">is falling is England</a>.</p>
<p>It also records where these pupils live, so has been used to calculate the percentages of pupils by ethnic group in any given neighbourhood. The obvious problem is this calculation applies only to those who are of school age. The less obvious problem is that the national pupil database does not include information on fee-charging schools. In other words, the data is contains is incomplete. </p>
<p>There are ways, of course, to weight (aka modify) data, and link it to other data, to improve the accuracy. And the ONS is unlikely to release anything it knows to be misleading. Generally, however, the more we zoom into such smaller data-sets, to explore neighbourhood-level patterns and differences, the more the possibility for inaccuracy increases. </p>
<p>The great strength of the census is that it provides geographically granular data that is hard to replicate through other sources (and, of course, doing so also encounters issues of personal data protection). </p>
<p>Conversely, the census’s weakness is that it is not temporally granular. It provides a lot of geographically detailed data about people and places, but that information is updated infrequently.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Photomosaics of Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret in an airport corridor." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568025/original/file-20240105-15-3385e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/568025/original/file-20240105-15-3385e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568025/original/file-20240105-15-3385e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568025/original/file-20240105-15-3385e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=491&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568025/original/file-20240105-15-3385e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=617&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568025/original/file-20240105-15-3385e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=617&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/568025/original/file-20240105-15-3385e0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=617&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Census data is able to depict the nation at a granular level.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://unsplash.com/photos/a-large-portrait-of-a-woman-on-a-wall-83PoVVkXa_s">Tomas Martinez|Unsplash</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>We could, of course, have both: a traditional census and a range of administrative and survey data to draw upon too. As a geographer, interested in detailed understandings of where people live, that is my preference. </p>
<p>This would not reduce the cost of the census, however. But there are social and economic costs in using data that lacks the geographical coverage that the census provides. Administrative data is good for measuring parts of the population, but it remains unclear whether those various parts come together well enough to sufficiently measure the whole. </p>
<p>Even if they do, data that is reliable for use at a national, regional or sub-regional scale does not automatically offer accurate portrayals of specific local and community conditions. I agree with the signatories of the open letter that the government has not convincingly argued for scrapping the census.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/220550/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Harris had received funding from various organisations, including ESRC-UKRI, to develop research that uses census data.</span></em></p>Citizen data that is reliable for use at a national, regional or sub-regional scale does not automatically offer accurate portrayals of specific local and community conditions.Richard Harris, Professor of Quantitative Social Geography, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1971562023-01-17T06:07:47Z2023-01-17T06:07:47ZCensus data shows England and Wales are more ethnically diverse – and less segregated – than ever before<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/503451/original/file-20230106-24-lihvhq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/mass-people-walking-through-streets-london-2244048033">4kclips | Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>National census data is the best tool – the gold standard – for obtaining the full, detailed picture of how the UK’s population is changing at the local level. In November 2022, publication of 2021 census data on <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/culturalidentity/ethnicity/bulletins/ethnicgroupenglandandwales/census2021">ethnic groups</a> presented an unrivalled opportunity to gain insights into the changing ethnic mosaic of England and Wales.</p>
<p>Many media reports on the data focused on the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/nov/29/leicester-and-birmingham-are-uk-first-minority-majority-cities-census-reveals">growth</a> of minority ethnic populations in cities including London, Birmingham, and Leicester. Local authority districts where white people no longer formed a majority of the population – so-called “minority-majority” places – drew special attention.</p>
<p>We have published the first peer-reviewed <a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/geoj.12507">analysis</a> of the geographies of ethnic diversity and residential segregation using data from the 2021 census. We also compared the results for 2021 with the three previous censuses from 2011, 2001 and 1991. We found that, increasingly, many places in Britain are most accurately described as highly ethnically diverse.</p>
<p>Our analysis showed that residential separation between people of different ethnic groups is decreasing. This new finding for 2021 confirms the <a href="https://theconversation.com/britain-is-becoming-more-diverse-not-more-segregated-68610">steady decline in segregation</a> noted in all censuses since 1991. </p>
<p>We argue that focusing on diversity and complexity is more helpful than framing the discussion in terms of a white majority and “non-white” minorities. </p>
<p><strong>Population breakdowns by ethnic group for the most ethnically diverse districts outside London in 2021:</strong></p>
<h2>Changing residential patterns</h2>
<p>In the <a href="https://theconversation.com/census-2021-will-reveal-how-a-year-of-lockdowns-and-furlough-has-transformed-the-uk-157337">2021 census of England and Wales</a>, people were asked to identify their ethnic background. The 2021 census specifies 19 ethnic groups, which we merged in our analysis into 16 to enable comparison over time with previous censuses: white British, white Irish, other white, Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Chinese, black African, black Caribbean, mixed white and black Caribbean, mixed white and black African, mixed white and Asian, other mixed, other Asian, other black, and any other.</p>
<p>We analysed residential patterns of different ethnic groups at three geographic scales. First, England and Wales as a whole. Then, the 331 districts (or local authorites) of which the two nations are comprised. And finally, the 36 thousand local neighbourhoods into which those local authorities are broken down (specifically, what the Office for National Statistics (ONS) refer to as “<a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/geography/ukgeographies/censusgeographies/census2021geographies#lower-layer-super-output-areas-lsoas">lower layer super output areas</a>”). </p>
<p>We found that the smaller the share of a district’s population that is white British, the greater the ethnic diversity of that district. Our research found that those places where white British as a group comprises less than half the population are, in fact, the most diverse places in England and Wales, home to sizeable proportions of people from many ethnic groups.</p>
<p>The most diverse district in England and Wales is the London borough of Newham, where people of Bangladeshi heritage had a 16% share of the population, followed by white British (15%), other white (15%), black African (12%) and Indian (11%). People from other ethnic groups made up the remaining third of Newham’s population. </p>
<p>Districts outside of London, of course, were also ethnically mixed. In Slough (the sixth most diverse district), the top four ethnic groups were white British (24%), Pakistani (22%), Indian (19%) and other white (11%). Further afield, in Manchester, the largest ethnic groups were white British (49%), Pakistani (12%), black African (9%) and other white (6%).</p>
<h2>Ethnic diversity is increasing</h2>
<p>In population studies, to compare levels of ethnic diversity between places and over time, we can use the reciprocal diversity index (RDI), with scores ranging from zero (one ethnic group only in an area) to 100 (equal share of all ethnic groups). Our findings show that ethnic diversity in England and Wales has steadily increased: from 2.02 in 2001, to 3.56 in 2011, to 5.14 in 2021.</p>
<p><strong>Reciprocal diversity index (RDI) scores across neighbourhoods in England and Wales for 2021:</strong></p>
<p>This growth of ethnic diversity at national and district levels is mirrored at the local level. Many neighbourhoods in large cities (such as London, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Leicester) have seen increasing diversity. And beyond metropolitan areas, we found fewer neighbourhoods with low levels of ethnic diversity than ever. </p>
<p>There is a clear expansion of ethnic diversity beyond city boundaries to many formerly non-diverse neighbourhoods in smaller towns and suburban locales. The number of neighbourhoods with very high levels of diversity (RDI of 30 or more) was 2,201 in 2021 (representing 6.2% of neighbourhoods). This is up from 1,578 in 2011 (4.4%), and just 342 (1.0%) in 2001. </p>
<p>Most neighbourhoods do remain majority white British, as do England and Wales as nations. The trend towards diversity, however, is unequivocal. People from many ethnic groups are living side by side not just in the biggest urban centres but in smaller cities, towns and neighbourhoods too.</p>
<p>Misleading narratives from populist politicians have long focused on a white/“non-white” framing of the population. A prime example was Nigel Farage’s <a href="https://twitter.com/Nigel_Farage/status/1597626503432671233">response</a> to the 2021 census data, in which he mistakenly claimed that “London, Birmingham and Manchester are all now minority white cities”. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/63806518">BBC</a> and the <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/news/statementsandletters/statementoninaccurateclaimsaboutcountryofbirthstatisticsandthecensus">Office for National Statistics</a> promptly corrected this misstatement. They clarified the nature of the changing populations of these areas by distinguishing between people who identify as “white” (a broad grouping that includes Irish, Gypsy or Irish Traveller, Roma, and “other white”) or white British. The white population of Birmingham is slightly less than half, while for London and Manchester the share remains above 50%. </p>
<p>Amid <a href="https://www.runnymedetrust.org/publications/over-exposed-and-under-protected">discussions</a> around the <a href="https://theconversation.com/racism-is-the-key-to-understanding-ethnic-inequalities-in-covid-19-despite-what-uk-government-says-148838">unequal impacts</a> of the pandemic on people from minoritised ethnic groups, there have been <a href="https://www.thelancet.com/pdfs/journals/lanpub/PIIS2468-2667(20)30162-6.pdf">calls</a> to no longer use the labels “black and minority ethnic” (BME) or “black, Asian and minority ethnic” (BAME). The reason is that these terms <a href="https://www.ethnicity-facts-figures.service.gov.uk/style-guide/writing-about-ethnicity#bame-and-bme">clump together</a> different minority ethnic groups. </p>
<p>The collective that these labels purport to represent only serves to obscure the distinct <a href="https://bristoluniversitypressdigital.com/display/book/9781447351269/9781447351269.xml">inequalities</a> associated with health, housing, employment, and education that people from individual groups face. </p>
<p>Adopting a binary “white/non-white” perspective on the changing ethnic mosaic of England and Wales is unhelpful. Its simplistic focus stokes anxieties about group differences and misrepresents the complexity of an ever more diverse Britain.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/197156/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gemma Catney and Richard Wright, along with Christopher D. Lloyd, Mark Ellis, Nissa Finney, Stephen Jivraj, and David Manley, co-authored the original paper (published in The Geographical Journal) on which this article is based.
Gemma Catney receives funding from the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) for the project ‘Geographies of Ethnic Diversity and Inequalities (GEDI)’ (award ES/W012499/1).</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Wright receives funding from the ESRC.</span></em></p>Instead of framing discussions about the UK population in terms of a white majority and “non-white” minorities, complexity should be the focus. Britain is increasingly diverse and less segregated.Gemma Catney, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography, Queen's University BelfastRichard Wright, Professor of Geography, Dartmouth CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1573802021-03-18T17:06:51Z2021-03-18T17:06:51ZCensus 2021: why are some people completing it online and others have paper forms?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390405/original/file-20210318-15-3fxlni.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=40%2C0%2C4500%2C2997&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-february-2021-leaflet-official-1923868949">Ink Drop/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, everyone should have received either a letter with a 16-digit code or a paper form for the <a href="https://census.gov.uk/">2021 census</a>. There are lots of great reasons why we should respond to the census, aside from it being a legal requirement. Among other things, it’s a good way to help provide an accurate snapshot of your community, which means people will <a href="https://census.gov.uk/about-the-census/why-you-should-take-part">get the services they need at a local level</a>. </p>
<p>The census is a fascinating dataset that’s vital to many areas of research and government decision making. It provides us with a count of the population, but also a wide range of demographic data like age, gender, family relationships, socio-economic information, ethno-cultural background, health, and some voluntary questions, including religious identity and sexuality. </p>
<p>This is the first census that most people will be asked to complete online. However, some have received paper forms through the post, while others have just received a letter asking them to fill in the census online. Though the mechanics of the census may appear complex, the reasons why are actually quite straightforward. </p>
<h2>Online or by post?</h2>
<p>So who gets a letter, who gets a form and why? The <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/">Office for National Statistics (ONS)</a> (which is coordinating the census) has tried to determine who gets what by assessing which households are likely to find it impossible or more difficult to respond to the census online. These households (<a href="https://uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/EAP113-Maximising-Response-Strategy-Overview.docx">around 10% of all households</a>) have been sent a paper form. Everyone else has received a letter with a code, asking them to complete the form online (however, it’s important to note that if you received a form, you can still respond online and if you got a letter, you can request a paper form if you want).</p>
<p>There are a number of good reasons for filling out your form online - it saves the ONS time and money when collating the results and means we can get more accurate data.</p>
<p>You might be thinking: “What about my Aunt Muriel who received a letter? She doesn’t use the internet. Why hasn’t she got a form?” This is because the ONS doesn’t know who’s able and willing to submit the form online - they can only model this based on the data they have.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Person filling out 2021 online sensus form on a tablet" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390410/original/file-20210318-23-16wr7me.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390410/original/file-20210318-23-16wr7me.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390410/original/file-20210318-23-16wr7me.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390410/original/file-20210318-23-16wr7me.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390410/original/file-20210318-23-16wr7me.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390410/original/file-20210318-23-16wr7me.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390410/original/file-20210318-23-16wr7me.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">If someone you know needs a form but is having problems getting one, you can request one on their behalf.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/2021-united-kingdom-census-questionnaire-seen-1931938847">mundissima/Shutterstcok</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As statistician George Box <a href="https://www.imperial.ac.uk/business-school/news/all-models-are-wrong-some-are-useful/">said</a>: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” When we use information about a group of people to make judgements about the individuals in that group, we call this an ecological fallacy. While the ONS has modelled who will (and who will not) respond online, even if this puts 95% of people in the right group, there will be some errors due to cases that contradict the model.</p>
<p>For those who the ONS has deemed unable or unwilling to complete the census form online, there will be some who don’t fit this criteria and vice versa. This is why the ONS has included a code on the forms. If you know someone who needs a form but is having problems requesting one, you can request one on their behalf.</p>
<h2>The hard to count index</h2>
<p>How did the ONS model this information? The ONS typically creates a <a href="https://uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/EAP102-Hard-to-Count-index-for-the-2021-Census.docx">“hard to count”</a> index to measure who might not respond to the census (also used for the 2001 and 2011 censuses). However, the 2021 census is different as this is the first time it’s been run “online first”, which means the ONS also had to include the <a href="http://bit.ly/3twxBUr">digitally excluded</a> into its index. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/census-2021-why-its-important-to-take-part-and-what-happens-to-your-information-156684">Census 2021: why it's important to take part and what happens to your information</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The key data used to drive this was <a href="https://www.ofcom.org.uk/research-and-data/multi-sector-research/infrastructure-research/connected-nations-2016/downloads">internet access data from Ofcom</a> for both fixed lines and mobile internet connectivity, looking at availability, usage and download speeds. This was combined with information on who has already interacted with government websites (such as via the DVLA and HMRC). </p>
<p>This data was used to create an area-based model, with each area assessed as either being able to complete the census online, or needing paper forms. This was tested and refined together with many other aspects of the census in the ONS’s big rehearsal for the census in 2019.</p>
<h2>When can I fill it out?</h2>
<p>The online census form is quick and easy to fill out. It takes about ten minutes per household plus ten minutes for each person. If you’ve ever renewed your passport or driving license online, you’ll find filling in the census very similar. You can fill out the survey (online or by post) as soon as you receive your code, there’s no need to wait until March 21. If anything does change before then, you can always update your information. </p>
<p>Filling in the census is a legal requirement and you can be fined up to £1,000 if you don’t complete it. This is because the data needs to be as complete as possible for it to be useful. </p>
<p>There are many more details on the ONS website, particularly in their <a href="https://uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/about-the-authority/committees/methodological-assurance-review-panel-census/papers/">papers documenting the methods used to run the census</a>, the “hard to count” and “maximising response” papers. Whether you opt for an online for or a paper one, make sure you fill in the census. After all, this is our best chance at understanding ourselves as a population.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157380/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Bearman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>As the deadline looms, it’s important to understand how best to fill out the survey – and why.Nick Bearman, Lecturer in Geospatial Analysis, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1573372021-03-18T14:29:59Z2021-03-18T14:29:59ZCensus 2021 will reveal how a year of lockdowns and furlough has transformed the UK<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390136/original/file-20210317-23-1239by8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=29%2C5%2C3956%2C2982&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The 2021 census will help show the changes wrought by a year of COVID-19.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/aerial-view-traditional-housing-estate-england-1044441571">K303/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Many people may feel unsure as to whether the English, Welsh and Northern Irish census of 2021 should be going ahead, given that it’s occurring during a pandemic when many aspects of our lives are far from normal. The census has actually <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53444651">been postponed by a year</a> in Scotland due to these concerns. </p>
<p>Census timing has appeared unfortunate before. The 2001 census took place during the peak of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/feb/21/foot-and-mouth-20-years-on-what-an-animal-virus-epidemic-taught-uk-science">foot and mouth disease</a> outbreak, amid concerns that census officials might spread the disease between farms. </p>
<p>Because most people will fill in their 2021 census form <a href="https://census.gov.uk/help/get-an-access-code-or-paper-census">online</a>, disease transmission is less of a concern this year. But there’s another criticism levelled at censuses: that they only ever deliver a snapshot of a population at a specific time, no matter how unusual or temporary the circumstances within a household may be.</p>
<p>There are worries that the 2021 census will capture a particularly distorted snapshot of a country transformed by the pandemic. It’ll capture young adults temporarily ensconced in parents’ homes, thousands of mainland Europeans who had planned to leave but are temporarily trapped in the UK by lockdown rules, and millions of furloughed workers counted as employed despite the real possibility that they’re soon to lose their jobs. </p>
<p>However, there’s a <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/censustransformationprogramme/censusdesign/operationalplanningresponsetothecoronaviruscovid19forcensus2021englandandwales">strong argument</a> in favour of holding the census now – precisely because so much has changed. The 2021 census won’t just capture a unique time in our history; it’s also the best way to show which areas and demographics have been newly disadvantaged by the pandemic, helping direct public funds and services to where they’re needed the most.</p>
<h2>Why hold a census?</h2>
<p>Without the census, held every ten years in the UK, local government would know very little about the composition of the population it currently serves. Officials wouldn’t know which areas were falling behind others, which homes were lying empty, or which families were living in cramped and unsafe conditions.</p>
<p>Census data like these underpin the fair allocation of public finances, revealing the areas and even the postcodes most in need of support. Plus, the census saves the taxpayer money: even the crudest estimate of the value of the census shows that running one every ten years saves <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/2011census/2011censusbenefits/2011censusbenefitsevaluationreport">£500 million annually</a> in administrative costs.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/census-2021-why-its-important-to-take-part-and-what-happens-to-your-information-156684">Census 2021: why it's important to take part and what happens to your information</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Previous censuses have been instrumental in improving lives across the country. As Britain built back from 1950s austerity, an extra <a href="https://data.gov.uk/dataset/396b3c7f-0afd-4a10-b40e-8e4af3a8c616/1966-census-10-census-personal-data-for-england-wales">1966 census</a> was squeezed between those taken in 1961 and 1971 to help guide the urgent investments of the government of the day. </p>
<p>Censuses also expose hidden inequalities. <a href="https://census.ukdataservice.ac.uk/use-data/censuses/forms.aspx">The 2001 census</a> was the last to ask which floor of a block of flats families lived on, revealing that most children living <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/sep/25/communities.politics">above the fifth floor</a> in England weren’t white. That fact meant a great deal more after the 2017 Grenfell tragedy.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="A census 2021 form currounded by models of people, houses, and a magnifying glass" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390134/original/file-20210317-17-qspydb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/390134/original/file-20210317-17-qspydb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390134/original/file-20210317-17-qspydb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390134/original/file-20210317-17-qspydb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390134/original/file-20210317-17-qspydb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390134/original/file-20210317-17-qspydb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/390134/original/file-20210317-17-qspydb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Census 2021 comes at a unique time for the UK – which is what makes it so important.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/london-uk-february-2021-leaflet-official-1923868256">Ink Drop/Shutterstock</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Census 2021</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/census/censustransformationprogramme/censusdesign/operationalplanningresponsetothecoronaviruscovid19forcensus2021englandandwales">2021 census</a> is not an ambitious census. The number of rooms (other than bedrooms) in a home is <a href="https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8531/">no longer asked</a>, as it has been since 1911 (when questions about being deaf and dumb, blind, a lunatic, or an imbecile were dropped). That means we’ll no longer know how overcrowded the worst-housed tenth of the population of England and Wales are when compared to the best-off tenth – who had <a href="http://www.dannydorling.org/books/peakinequality/figures/figure-372.html">five times as many</a> rooms per person in 2011.</p>
<p>The 2021 census will only ask one new question: whether someone has ever served in the UK armed forces. This could be useful in understanding the links between <a href="https://www.britishlegion.org.uk/docs/default-source/campaigns-policy-and-research/litrev_uk_vets_homelessness.pdf?sfvrsn=110aad9f_2">ex-service people and homelessness</a>. The only other change is that sexual orientation and gender identity have been assigned more categories.</p>
<p>But this census will nonetheless bestow much-needed clarity on a society buffeted by the pandemic. Uncertainty about how many people are <a href="https://ukandeu.ac.uk/labour-force-survey-the-mystery-of-the-shrinking-migrant-workforce/">actually living in the UK right now</a> – let alone where exactly they live – is higher this year than it has been for many decades. It’s thought that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/08/million-people-left-britain-pandemic-exodus-brexit">over a million people</a> left the country in 2020 who would not normally have left, but we don’t know how many really did and if they left for good. This has serious implications for the allocation of funding across regions.</p>
<p>More importantly still, the 2021 census will provide a clearer picture of the inequalities that have come to light since the beginning of the pandemic. The <a href="https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cocooning-elderly-suffer-mental-health-decline-in-pandemic-8fhbvckl8">isolation of the elderly</a>, the suffering in <a href="https://www.shu.ac.uk/news/all-articles/latest-news/covid-impact-on-industrial-towns">old industrial wards</a>, and the disproportionate impact of <a href="https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/892376/COVID_stakeholder_engagement_synthesis_beyond_the_data.pdf">COVID-19 on BAME communities</a> will all be better illustrated and contextualised by this census. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-is-hitting-bame-communities-hard-on-every-front-136327">Coronavirus is hitting BAME communities hard on every front</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In February 2020, just weeks before the start of the pandemic, the BBC ran a story suggesting that the 2021 census <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51468919">could be the last census</a>. In hindsight, that seems ludicrous: now more than ever, we need the census to tell us even the most basic of facts about our society. Perhaps the pandemic will bring us to our senses when it comes to the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13210080">value of a census</a>. </p>
<p>I’d argue we go even further, adding an extra <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/mar/14/gvfgf">census in 2026</a> which will adequately reflect the damage done by the pandemic, and how equitable the UK’s recovery will look a half-decade hence. The pandemic has forced people online, making a largely online census, held <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/mar/14/danny-dorling-emergency-census-2026-true-state-uk">every five years</a>, far more feasible and less expensive. Perhaps we should even start to ask <a href="http://www.dannydorling.org/wp-content/files/dannydorling_publication_id1651.pdf">household income</a> in our censuses, as they do in the US, to further enrich our data on inequality across the country.</p>
<p>Official statistics like the census are not just for governments but for all of us. Crucially, census data helps us to assess the performance of government. As the UK looks to “<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/build-back-better-our-plan-for-growth">build back better</a>” after the pandemic, we’ll be able to look to the 2021 census to judge whether new policies tackle inequalities in the regions that need the most help.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/157337/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Danny Dorling does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Because of the pandemic, we know less about the shape and size of our society than we have for decades.Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1213992019-08-14T09:48:20Z2019-08-14T09:48:20Z‘It’s a national crisis’: UK’s birth rate is falling dramatically<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287900/original/file-20190813-9394-1r24ivb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The birth rate in England and Wales is now the lowest it has ever been since records began. Only <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthsummarytablesenglandandwales/2018">11 babies were born for every 1,000 people in 2018</a>, with 657,076 born overall. To put this in perspective, <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/datasets/birthsummarytables">957,782</a> babies were born in 1920 despite the overall population being 22m fewer than it is today. </p>
<p>It may not seem a cause for concern. We are all familiar with the strain being placed on the environment by increased human activity – and in fact it has even been suggested that to help tackle climate change <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jul/12/want-to-fight-climate-change-have-fewer-children">people should be having fewer children</a>.</p>
<p>But with an increasingly <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/ageing/articles/livinglongerhowourpopulationischangingandwhyitmatters/2018-08-13#how-is-the-uk-population-changing">ageing population</a>, and Brexit due to impact on the number of <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld201719/ldselect/ldeconaf/11/1106.htm#_idTextAnchor039">non-British workers in the employment market</a>, the UK is facing a population crisis. </p>
<h2>All time low</h2>
<p>This isn’t the first time the UK has encountered such an issue. The early 20th century saw a continued decline in birth rates combined with high levels of <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/vitalstatisticspopulationandhealthreferencetables">infant mortality</a>. And with the losses of the First World War and the threat of another conflict approaching, motherhood was increasingly of interest to both society and state. </p>
<p>Concern over the sustained reduction in birth rates prompted increased levels of government involvement in maternal and child welfare. <a href="https://www.perfar.eu/policies/maternity-and-child-welfare-act-1918">The Maternity and Child Welfare Act of 1918</a> extended the powers of local authorities to establish antenatal clinics, educational classes, dental treatment and home visits for expectant mothers, and empowered them to provide food and milk for pregnant women in need. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287591/original/file-20190810-144883-wzbnb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287591/original/file-20190810-144883-wzbnb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287591/original/file-20190810-144883-wzbnb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287591/original/file-20190810-144883-wzbnb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=273&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287591/original/file-20190810-144883-wzbnb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287591/original/file-20190810-144883-wzbnb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287591/original/file-20190810-144883-wzbnb8.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=343&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Crude Birth Rate for England and Wales: 1958 - 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Office for National Statistics</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At a time when state aid was uncommon, pregnant women and infants were unusually favoured. By 1921, £9.8m a year was spent on community care and £7.7m on maternal and child welfare. By 1937, community care expenditure totalled <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Metropolitan_Maternity.html?id=f1TYtndyR8UC">£29.5m – with £17.4m</a> alone spent on maternal and child welfare services. </p>
<p>Over time, a package of measures was put in place to attempt to support mothers and ensure the health of both mothers and children. And the number of infant welfare centres in England and Wales increased massively – from 650 in 1915 to <a href="https://archive.org/details/birthpovertyandw032906mbp/page/n8">3,580</a> by 1938.</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287592/original/file-20190810-144873-7hzgy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287592/original/file-20190810-144873-7hzgy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287592/original/file-20190810-144873-7hzgy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287592/original/file-20190810-144873-7hzgy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=910&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287592/original/file-20190810-144873-7hzgy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287592/original/file-20190810-144873-7hzgy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/287592/original/file-20190810-144873-7hzgy1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1144&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Poster used to advertise the new family allowance - 1945.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The National Archives</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As the century progressed, the country continued to invest in its families. In 1945, the <a href="http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cabinetpapers/themes/beveridge-report-child-benefit.htm">Family Allowances Act</a> was passed, paying five shillings a week for each child in a family – excluding the eldest if one adult was in work. The rate was increased in 1952 by a further three shillings, and in 1956 the Family Allowances Act extended the payments to all children. </p>
<p>Alongside efforts to financially support families, there were various government funded projects that attempted to uncover the root causes of birth rate decline. In 1937, a survey titled “<a href="https://academic.oup.com/poq/article-abstract/9/1/29/1817187">The Reluctant Stork</a>” was undertaken to ask a sample of women why they were not expanding their families. The answers that came back broadly fell into the categories of money, lack of support, housing and security.</p>
<h2>An ageing nation</h2>
<p>In times of uncertainty, families do not add to their number – this is as true now as it was in the 1930s. And the decline in birthrate in the UK is as serious a matter in 2019 as it was a century ago. </p>
<p>The UK is an increasingly aged nation and that is only set to become more so. There are 26.6m people in the UK aged between 40 and 79 – these are the people who, in the next 20 years, will be needing care or approaching that point. In contrast, there are fewer than 14m young people under the age of 19 – the people who in the next 20 years will be providing that care. </p>
<p>Right now there is a deficit of <a href="https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/articles/brexit-implications-health-social-care">100,000</a> staff across the NHS – with a further <a href="https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/articles/brexit-implications-health-social-care">110,000</a> vacancies in adult social care. That is the situation with an EU workforce still supporting the system – <a href="https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/NMDS-SC-intelligence/Workforce-intelligence/publications/The-state-of-the-adult-social-care-sector-and-workforce-in-England.aspx">62,000</a> of NHS England’s 1.2m workers and approximately <a href="https://www.skillsforcare.org.uk/NMDS-SC-intelligence/Workforce-intelligence/publications/The-state-of-the-adult-social-care-sector-and-workforce-in-England.aspx">104,000</a> of the 1.3m employees within adult social care are EU nationals. </p>
<p>So given that the birth rate has fallen consistently for over 60 years, it’s clear there will not be enough young people coming into the workforce. And with an ageing population, the strain upon that smaller number is all the greater.</p>
<h2>Families hit hardest</h2>
<p>The UK is unsettled and the future is uncertain. Austerity has been in force for almost a decade and the impact has been felt by many families. Whereas the interwar and post-1948 governments made mothers and children a priority in order to tackle the low birth rate, the last ten years has seen support for families rolled back. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/05/1000-sure-start-childrens-centres-may-have-shut-since-2010">Sure Start centres have been closed</a> in their hundreds, a two child limit has been enforced on <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/child-tax-credit-exceptions-to-the-2-child-limit">Tax Credit</a> and <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/universal-credit-and-families-with-more-than-2-children-information-for-claimants">Universal Credit</a> payments, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-warning-nhs-midwives-england-maternity-crisis-a8509941.html">maternity services are struggling</a> and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/infant-mortality-rates-uk-ons-childbirth-nhs-a8961806.html">infant mortality rates</a> are rising. </p>
<p>This is a national crisis once more and one that can only be tackled by again placing social and financial value on parenting and the family. The UK needs children. It needs children to support the economy and the ageing population in the decades ahead. But the only way this will happen is if children and families are valued and supported once more.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/121399/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carly-Emma Leachman receives funding from Nottingham Trent University and is a member of The Labour Party. She is the mother of four children. </span></em></p>The UK is facing a population crisis with birth rates at an all-time low.Carly Leachman, PhD Candidate in the School of Arts and Humanities, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1196182019-07-02T12:08:34Z2019-07-02T12:08:34ZMortality rates are still rising in the UK – and everyone is ignoring how many more people are dying<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282096/original/file-20190701-105164-1j5yfwx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">What is happening to UK life expectancy?</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/success?u=http%3A%2F%2Fdownload.shutterstock.com%2Fgatekeeper%2FW3siZSI6MTU2MjAyOTQ0NSwiYyI6Il9waG90b19zZXNzaW9uX2lkIiwiZGMiOiJpZGxfNzkyMjYzMjM5IiwiayI6InBob3RvLzc5MjI2MzIzOS9tZWRpdW0uanBnIiwibSI6MSwiZCI6InNodXR0ZXJzdG9jay1tZWRpYSJ9LCJRVS95S292bVR1MXJYT0ZqdlNOTFZtZG1BMTgiXQ%2Fshutterstock_792263239.jpg&pi=33421636&m=792263239&src=9HRyI_7hZ3ocBCC_YddPbA-1-11">Ralf Geithe/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>When the UK’s annual mid-year population estimates were released in late June 2019, much of the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-48769175">media coverage</a> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jun/26/uk-population-rises-to-664-million-but-rate-of-growth-slows">focused</a> on the fact that the population had risen, but growth rates had stalled. The Express newspaper <a href="https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1145955/uk-population-office-for-national-statistics-ons">reported</a> that the total population rise of just under 400,000 in the year to mid-2018 was still fuelled by immigration, and that: “The surge is the equivalent of adding a city the size of Coventry to the country.”</p>
<p>But what headlines reporting on this data missed were the 623,000 deaths and why that number was important in the year to mid-2018. This was 20,000 more than the previous year – a 3% increase. That is startling because it continues a rise in mortality that began with the first significant fall in UK life expectancy in 2014 and means that UK life expectancy will still be lower today than it was then, five long years ago. </p>
<p>The mid-year population estimates also reveal by how much the population has aged, and that the rise in mortality is not due to ageing. As mortality rates for almost all age groups have risen, for both men and women, overall life expectancy will have fallen yet again. </p>
<p>When, in August 2018, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/articles/changingtrendsinmortalityaninternationalcomparison/2000to2016">compared</a> the UK with 19 other countries, mostly in Europe, but also including the US and Japan, it <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/visualisations/dvc521/international/chart12/datadownload.xlsx">found</a> that only the UK had seen such a large fall in life expectancy since 2014, for both men and women. We now know that has continued through to at least the end of the summer of 2018.</p>
<h2>Digging into the data</h2>
<p>The fact that nobody appears to have noticed is largely due to the volume of data journalists needed to sift through to find this out and because the ONS didn’t point them towards the significance of continued mortality rises in its <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/populationestimatesforukenglandandwalesscotlandandnorthernireland">press release</a>. </p>
<p>Anyone who wants to know what has actually happened most recently to mortality rates in the UK has to download a huge <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/populationestimatesforukenglandandwalesscotlandandnorthernireland">dataset</a> from the ONS website titled: “MYBE2_detailed components of change series”. </p>
<p>The data is very detailed. For instance, it shows that in Coventry more men aged 86, 87, 88, 89 and 90+ died in the year to mid-2018 than the year before. The spreadsheet also revealed, using NHS patient registrations, that the rise in mortality of very elderly men in Coventry was not due to a sudden influx of people aged over 90-years-old – in fact more left than arrived. It even goes as far as to explain that only three men aged 90 or more arrived into Coventry from outside the UK that year. </p>
<p>But Coventry is too small an area to try to examine for reliable trends in just one year for this one small age group. So I combined all the data for all the local authorities in England and Wales to see what has happened. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282449/original/file-20190703-126350-1d645pp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282449/original/file-20190703-126350-1d645pp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282449/original/file-20190703-126350-1d645pp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282449/original/file-20190703-126350-1d645pp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282449/original/file-20190703-126350-1d645pp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=746&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282449/original/file-20190703-126350-1d645pp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282449/original/file-20190703-126350-1d645pp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282449/original/file-20190703-126350-1d645pp.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=937&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/populationestimatesforukenglandandwalesscotlandandnorthernireland">Office for National Statistics</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The table above shows that, overall, 9,493 more men died in England between the summer of 2017 and 2018 and the preceding 12 months – a rise of 3%. There was a rise in mortality rates for most age groups, of which the largest relative rise year-on-year was a 14% increase in the rate of mortality of boys aged five to nine. </p>
<p>The table above includes the absolute rise per million people at risk. “At risk” just means being alive at the start of the period, in June 2017. The changes in risk are for each group dying in the subsequent 12 months compared to the same aged group over the 12 months before. Everyone resident in England is included in the groups “at risk”. By that measure, an additional nine boys aged between five and nine-years-old died for every one million alive at the start of the year, compared to the previous year. </p>
<p>For some age groups there has been a rise in deaths – for instance of 802 more women aged 70-74 – but a fall in the death rates as the population at risk rose faster than the number of deaths. However, such examples are rare.</p>
<h2>Rising mortality</h2>
<p>For men, the largest rise per million people alive was an extra 3,459 deaths for all men aged 90+. This means that the large increase in deaths in this age group was not due to many more people aged 89 becoming aged 90. It was not due to the ageing within the group, nor was it due to a sudden increase in inward migration of very elderly men into Britain (returning from Spain perhaps due to concern over their future health care and Brexit). Instead the rise in mortality is real. </p>
<p>Women did a little better than men according to these latest figures – and the table above shows a 2% rise in age-adjusted mortality rates in the year to summer 2018. But in earlier years it’s been mostly women who’ve died in the greatest increasing numbers. For women in England the highest rise in mortality rates has been for those in their 90s with an additional 2,504 dying of these oldest ages – an additional 6,358 per million at risk. This is the largest rise of all shown in the table above.</p>
<p>On a graph, the trend of the continued increases in mortality in England is a little more shocking. Only men and women aged 70-74 have experienced the usual improvements in life expectancy that should occur in a normal year for every single age group. The UK has not had a “normal” year when it comes to mortality for at least seven years now. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282450/original/file-20190703-126391-1hubm6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282450/original/file-20190703-126391-1hubm6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/282450/original/file-20190703-126391-1hubm6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282450/original/file-20190703-126391-1hubm6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282450/original/file-20190703-126391-1hubm6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282450/original/file-20190703-126391-1hubm6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282450/original/file-20190703-126391-1hubm6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/282450/original/file-20190703-126391-1hubm6d.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/datasets/populationestimatesforukenglandandwalesscotlandandnorthernireland">Office for National Statistics</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The larger changes shown in the table above will not be due to random variation because the population of England is so large. But for children – for whom death is far less common – random factors can be important when considering annual changes. The rise of two deaths of girls aged between five and nine could be due to chance events, road crashes, childhood cancer, or just neglect. But add the numbers up over recent years and these rates do not rise again and again due to chance.</p>
<h2>Warnings for the future</h2>
<p>Something is going very wrong. And whatever is going on is unique to the UK because in no other European country have there been overall falls in life expectancy that look at all like this. The figures for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are almost certainly as bad as England, but no one has as yet bothered to study them in any detail – let alone tried to work out where they are heading.</p>
<p>ONS has left some clues about why this is happening. Its statisticians <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationestimates/bulletins/annualmidyearpopulationestimates/mid2018#main-points">say</a> that currently: “Some 45 local authorities now have falling population.” And they explain that there were also very few births between the summer 2017 and summer of 2018, just 744,000 for the UK as a whole. That’s a remarkable fall of 69,000 births since the year that began in the summer of 2011, when births would have been due to conceptions in early autumn 2010 onwards. We forget how much better things were in 2010, how much more optimistic many of us then felt to start a family, despite the great financial crash of 2008.</p>
<p>The rise in UK mortality began with elderly women and became <a href="http://www.dannydorling.org/?page_id=3970">very clear</a> by February 2014. In June 2016, it was ONS mid-year estimates released on the day of the Brexit referendum result that <a href="https://www.bmj.com/content/354/bmj.i3697.full?ijkey=Qzh0MvExCSL1BkA&keytype=ref">revealed</a> the rise in mortality rate from earlier to now be accelerating. Few noticed as Brexit transfixed us. In 2017, new ONS figures <a href="https://theconversation.com/life-expectancy-in-britain-has-fallen-so-much-that-a-million-years-of-life-could-disappear-by-2058-why-88063">revealed</a> that a million future years of life in Britain were no longer forecast to be lived. By March 2019, the actuaries of the UK had <a href="https://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2019/03/19/danny-dorling/">declared</a> that this change was now established for all age groups including new born infants. </p>
<p>Ask yourself this: why do we care so little that we cannot even be bothered to analyse and interrogate our mortality statistics properly? Why, when infant mortality <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/24/britain-life-expectancy-health-gap-rich-poor-tory-leadership?CMP=fb_cif">has risen each year</a> from 2014 onwards – from 3.6 to 3.7 to 3.8 to 3.9 children dying per 1,000 born – do we <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isM1aKgV0zM">not care</a>? Why instead are we lamenting that there are still gross annual immigration rates equivalent to the population of the city of Coventry?</p>
<p>We should realise that with birth rates falling and more and more people dying more quickly than those the same age as them were in the past, as well as more falling ill, we will soon need all the people we can get.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119618/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Danny Dorling does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There were an extra 623,000 deaths in the UK in the year to mid-2018 – an increase of 3%.Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1174752019-05-30T10:26:26Z2019-05-30T10:26:26ZWhat the UK population will look like by 2061 under hard, soft or no Brexit scenarios<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276987/original/file-20190529-192428-1ada3cb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/255549613?src=fPCylNwuDEs9-lbkSvtaYQ-1-16&size=medium_jpg">DeymosHR/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>With the British parliament still deadlocked, the UK’s future Brexit strategy is not yet set in stone. Whatever path the UK chooses from here will have an impact on the future of British immigration policy – and therefore on the size of the population.</p>
<p>In a <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2019.1577726">new study</a>, we produced a range of population projections for the UK to the year 2061, based on assumptions about what would happen to international migration under three Brexit scenarios: no Brexit, a soft Brexit and a hard Brexit. </p>
<p>We found that under all of the scenarios, the UK population is projected to become more ethnically diverse and older – and that it will continue to grow, albeit at different rates. </p>
<p>Population growth is a key driver of demand for housing, infrastructure, school places, health care and consumption, and so population projections are essential for the effective planning of these services. Of the components which make up these projections, international migration is the least predictable, yet has a large impact on the size and composition of the population. Our scenarios therefore used different assumptions about future immigration policy. </p>
<p>For the no Brexit scenario we extrapolated trends seen in UK total immigration and emigration flows between 1991 and 2014. According to our model, this scenario would see population growth for the next few decades, with a population in 2061 of 86.9m.</p>
<p>For soft Brexit, we took the long-term assumption for net international migration in the <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/bulletins/nationalpopulationprojections/2015-10-29">national population projections</a> of the Office for National Statistics, based on the population at the end of June 2014. Our model assumed that the free movement of EU citizens would continue, but that a combination of factors would make the UK less attractive to migrants. Under this scenario, the UK population would continue to grow, but at a slower rate than the no Brexit scenario, and by 2061 the total population is projected to be 82.9m. </p>
<p>Under the hard Brexit scenario, we translated the 2010 <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/reducing-net-migration-tens-of-thousands-per-year-remains-government-target-a7145411.html">Conservative Party pledge</a> to reduce net international migration to “fewer than tens of thousands” into assumptions about immigration and emigration flows. Under this scenario, population growth would be slower, reaching 78.1m in 2061. </p>
<p>Taken together, this means that the UK population would be 8.8m people smaller by 2061 under a hard Brexit, compared to if the UK did not leave the EU. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277010/original/file-20190529-192350-4o04id.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277010/original/file-20190529-192350-4o04id.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277010/original/file-20190529-192350-4o04id.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277010/original/file-20190529-192350-4o04id.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277010/original/file-20190529-192350-4o04id.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277010/original/file-20190529-192350-4o04id.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277010/original/file-20190529-192350-4o04id.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277010/original/file-20190529-192350-4o04id.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2019.1577726">Lomax et al.</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Population ageing under all scenarios</h2>
<p>The different scenarios also have an impact on how old the population is. One way of assessing this change is to look at the number of people of working age for every one person who is retired. This measure is called the “potential support ratio” and reveals the challenge for pension, healthcare and social care systems from population ageing. It is a relatively crude measure, but does serve to highlight how the age composition of populations changes over time. </p>
<p>In our analysis, we took people over the age of 70 as a proxy for retirement – taking into account planned and potential changes to the state retirement age – and all people aged between 19 to 69 for the working population, to take into account potential educational commitments of younger people. </p>
<p>The 2016 figure was around 5.5 working age people for every one person over retirement age. Under the no Brexit scenario, this would drop to 2.8 in 2061. It would drop to 2.7 under a soft Brexit scenario while a hard Brexit would result in 2.5 people of working age per retired person. Under all scenarios, there are fewer working age people to support those in retirement. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277173/original/file-20190530-69091-1ku72l6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277173/original/file-20190530-69091-1ku72l6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/277173/original/file-20190530-69091-1ku72l6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=189&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277173/original/file-20190530-69091-1ku72l6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=189&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277173/original/file-20190530-69091-1ku72l6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=189&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277173/original/file-20190530-69091-1ku72l6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=238&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277173/original/file-20190530-69091-1ku72l6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=238&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/277173/original/file-20190530-69091-1ku72l6.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=238&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2019.1577726">Lomax et al.</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>More ethnically diverse</h2>
<p>Our results also showed that the different scenarios would have an impact on the ethnic composition of the population. Understanding the ethnic composition of the population is important for ensuring equality of opportunity and in reducing discrimination. The breakdown is also required for effective planning, because different ethnic groups have varying needs for <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/postpn276.pdf">health care</a> and social care, particularly through the <a href="http://europepmc.org/abstract/med/19781840">provision of informal care</a> and education <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/S003803850000002X">through language provision</a>. These differences in need for different services were highlighted by a <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/race-disparity-audit">2017 comprehensive audit</a> of all UK government data, which revealed that disparities aren’t uniform across all domains for all ethnicities. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-race-disparity-audit-means-little-unless-we-consider-where-people-live-85408">New 'race disparity audit' means little unless we consider where people live</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>As a crude measure, we were able to assess the proportion of the population who aren’t white British or Irish. Under all three of our scenarios, this proportion rises. The 2016 figure was around 17.5%. Under a no Brexit scenario, this rises to 41.9% in 2061. A soft Brexit would see the figure rise to 40.4%, and a hard Brexit to 35.6%. Part of the reason for this rise, no matter what assumptions are made about international migration, is due to demographic momentum, as ethnic minority populations who are relatively young continue to grow as they form families and have children.</p>
<p>We’ve also projected an increase in ethnic diversity across a large number of local authority districts. This can be assessed by what’s called an “index of diversity”, under which a score of zero represents no diversity – all people belong to a single ethnic group – while a score of one represents complete diversity, where all groups are equally represented. </p>
<p>The maps below show that in 2016, urban areas had the highest ethnic diversity scores (shown in red), while the lowest diversity scores (shown in blue) were in rural and coastal local authorities. Under the Brexit scenario – the map shows the soft Brexit scenario but the results for hard Brexit are very similar – diversity in 2061 would be higher across the UK, with particularly high increases for those local authorities bordering the larger cities. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276801/original/file-20190528-42593-1c7thid.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276801/original/file-20190528-42593-1c7thid.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/276801/original/file-20190528-42593-1c7thid.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276801/original/file-20190528-42593-1c7thid.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276801/original/file-20190528-42593-1c7thid.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=260&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276801/original/file-20190528-42593-1c7thid.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276801/original/file-20190528-42593-1c7thid.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/276801/original/file-20190528-42593-1c7thid.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=327&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">These are cartograms using hexagons representing a uniform population in 2016, which are built up into local authority district sets so the area on the map is proportional to the population of the local authority district.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">The hexagon map was designed by Bethan Thomas and Danny Dorling and implemented for the ETHPOP project by Pia Wohland.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Our research shows that under all three different potential Brexit scenarios where international migration assumptions were tested, the UK population is projected to increase in size, become more ethnically diverse and the population structure shifts to one which is older.</p>
<p>These headline changes are seen across the UK, where the majority of local authority districts become more diverse in 2061 than they are now. There are major uncertainties associated with these UK projections, but the scenarios we’ve set out provide a plausible range of outcomes. Those planning future immigration policy would be wise to consider what this means for public services and for society.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117475/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nik Lomax has received funding from the Economic & Social Research Council to support the research reported.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Paul Norman has received funding from the Economic & Social Research Council to support the research reported. He is a member of the Labour Party. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Philip Rees has received funding from the Economic & Social Research Council to support the research reported. </span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pia Wohland has received funding from the Economic & Social Research Council to support the research reported.</span></em></p>Whatever happens with Brexit, the UK population is projected to increase in size, become more ethnically diverse and shift to a structure which is older.Nik Lomax, Associate professor in Data Analytics for Population Research, University of LeedsPaul Norman, Lecturer in Human Geography, University of LeedsPhilip Rees, Emeritus Professor, University of LeedsPia Wohland, Research Academic, Queensland Centre for Population Research, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/903452018-01-23T14:40:11Z2018-01-23T14:40:11ZThink your country is crowded? These maps reveal the truth about population density across Europe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202453/original/file-20180118-158536-1wgu9r9.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alasdair Rae</span>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s often said that England is the <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2530125/This-worryingly-crowded-isle-England-officially-Europes-densely-packed-country.html">most densely populated</a> large country in Europe – typically in discussions about the nation’s rising population, and the growing strain on public services. But it’s not true. </p>
<p>With 426 people per km², as of 2016, England is densely populated when compared to most other European countries. But it’s not as densely populated as the Netherlands, where there were 505 people per km², or a much poorer country such as Bangladesh, where there were 1,252 per km².</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299832/original/file-20191101-88378-gapewg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299832/original/file-20191101-88378-gapewg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/299832/original/file-20191101-88378-gapewg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299832/original/file-20191101-88378-gapewg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299832/original/file-20191101-88378-gapewg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=500&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299832/original/file-20191101-88378-gapewg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299832/original/file-20191101-88378-gapewg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/299832/original/file-20191101-88378-gapewg.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=628&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The truth about how crowded your country is.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">World Bank</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Yet simply dividing the number of people by the land area of a country is not always the best way to understand population density. Consider a country such as Russia, where urban density is high, but there are vast swathes of empty land. The figures will tell you density is very low (eight people per km²); but this it not what most people in Russia experience in their daily lives. The same is true of Australia, Canada and other large, <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS?locations=BR-AU-CA-RU">highly urbanised</a> nations.</p>
<p>That’s why I set out to understand the topic in more depth, using alternative measures of population density. I looked at 39 countries across Europe and came up with a set of statistics to help us understand settlement patterns in a more nuanced way. If you are interested in looking at this issue globally, I recommend Duncan Smith’s <a href="http://luminocity3d.org/WorldPopDen/">World Population Density</a> interactive map, or the World Bank’s <a href="https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.POP.DNST?locations=NL-GB-BD">data comparison tool</a>.</p>
<h2>A bird’s eye view</h2>
<p>To begin with, I took Eurostat’s population density <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/gisco/geodata/reference-data/population-distribution-demography/geostat">grid data</a> for 2011 and mapped it. This divides Europe into areas of 1km², and then gives a population count for each area, so that we can compare like-with-like across Europe. As you can see from the map, it provides a good overview of where people live, and where they don’t live: notice the sparse settlement pattern in the Alps or northern Scandinavia, or indeed much of Spain. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202501/original/file-20180118-158550-1f7l04x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202501/original/file-20180118-158550-1f7l04x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202501/original/file-20180118-158550-1f7l04x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202501/original/file-20180118-158550-1f7l04x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202501/original/file-20180118-158550-1f7l04x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=620&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202501/original/file-20180118-158550-1f7l04x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202501/original/file-20180118-158550-1f7l04x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202501/original/file-20180118-158550-1f7l04x.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=779&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">European population density.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Data: Eurostat. Mapping: by the author</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>This bird’s eye view helps us to understand the wider context. For example, we can see an area of high population density extending in a rough arc from north-west England down to Milan, with a little break in the Alps. This is the so-called “<a href="http://www.nordregio.se/Global/EJSD/Refereed%20articles/Refereed_56.pdf">blue banana</a>”, or dorsale européenne (European backbone), identified by French geographer Roger Brunet in 1989, and it is home to more than 110m people. </p>
<p>But we can get further clarity still by honing in on “built-up” density, which takes into account only those 1km² areas with people living in them. I call this figure “lived density”, since it provides a way of seeing the kinds of population densities that people experience in their day-to-day lives, within built-up areas. </p>
<h2>The Spanish distribution</h2>
<p>A good way to understand this measure is to look at Spain. It has a population density of 93 people per km², giving the impression of a sparsely populated country. This is borne out in the map, where much of Spain appears to be empty; much more so than any other large European country. </p>
<p>The reasons for this date back to Medieval times, as Daniel Oto-Peralías at the University of St Andrews <a href="http://ersa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/The-Medieval-Frontier-Origins-Main-text-Sept-2017.pdf">has explained</a>. Yet characterising Spain as a sparsely populated country does not reflect the experience on the ground – as anyone who knows Barcelona or Madrid can tell you.</p>
<p>Spain contains within it more than 505,000 1km squares. But only 13% of them are lived in. This means that the “lived density” for Spain is in fact 737 people per km², rather than 93. So even though the settlement pattern appears sparse, people are actually quite tightly packed together.</p>
<p>In fact, Spain could claim to be the most densely populated major European country by this measure, despite its appearance on the map. This also helps explain why Spain has the most densely populated km² in Europe; more than 53,000 people inhabit a single 1km² area in Barcelona. France also has an area with more than 50,000 people in a single km², in Paris. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202596/original/file-20180119-80194-jkrefr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202596/original/file-20180119-80194-jkrefr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202596/original/file-20180119-80194-jkrefr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202596/original/file-20180119-80194-jkrefr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202596/original/file-20180119-80194-jkrefr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202596/original/file-20180119-80194-jkrefr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202596/original/file-20180119-80194-jkrefr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202596/original/file-20180119-80194-jkrefr.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Barcelona from above: possibly the most densely populated km² in Europe.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Author</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>There are 33 1km² areas across Europe with a population of 40,000 or more: 23 are in Spain, and ten are in France. England’s most densely populated km², in West London, has just over 20,000 people in it. Globally, the highest figure is close to 200,000, in Dhaka, Bangladesh.</p>
<h2>See for yourself</h2>
<p>When we look at “lived density” across Europe, it’s fair to say that England is a densely populated country – but it still sits behind Spain and the Netherlands on the list of major European nations, and below the microstates of Monaco, Andorra and Malta. The lived density figure for the Netherlands is 546 people per km², compared to 531 for England, 204 for Wales, 200 for Scotland and 160 for Northern Ireland.</p>
<p>Although these population numbers are a little dated now (they are based on 2011 data), they can still demonstrate how population density figures might differ from what we experience in our day-to-day lives. Arithmetic population density measures can be useful, but on their own they don’t always help inform public debate, or match up with our perceptions of urban density. </p>
<p>I have provided the data for all 39 countries, where available, so you can compare the figures for yourself. By using a more sophisticated measure, we can gain a more nuanced perspective of settlement patterns and relative densities and, hopefully, better capture the reality on the ground in towns and cities. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202439/original/file-20180118-158516-tnqwih.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202439/original/file-20180118-158516-tnqwih.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202439/original/file-20180118-158516-tnqwih.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202439/original/file-20180118-158516-tnqwih.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202439/original/file-20180118-158516-tnqwih.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=731&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202439/original/file-20180118-158516-tnqwih.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202439/original/file-20180118-158516-tnqwih.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/202439/original/file-20180118-158516-tnqwih.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=918&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Population density metrics.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Data: Eurostat. Calculations by the author.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><em><strong>Note:</strong> the final column shows how many 1km cells have people in them, but within that the level of density also varies, so this is not a “percent urbanised” measure.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90345/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alasdair Rae does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Understanding population density takes more than just arithmetic – that’s where mapping can help reveal which countries and cities are really getting cramped.Alasdair Rae, Professor in Urban Studies and Planning, University of SheffieldLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/880632017-11-29T15:27:12Z2017-11-29T15:27:12ZLife expectancy in Britain has fallen so much that a million years of life could disappear by 2058 – why?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196327/original/file-20171124-21853-tcsiv9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=4%2C2%2C994%2C494&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">via shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Buried deep in a note towards the end of a recent bulletin
published by the British government’s statistical agency was a startling revelation. On average, people in the UK are now projected to live <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/bulletins/nationalpopulationprojections/2016basedstatisticalbulletin#changes-since-the-2014-based-projections">shorter lives</a> than previously thought.</p>
<p>In their projections, published in October 2017, statisticians at the Office for National Statistics (ONS) estimated that by 2041, life expectancy for women would be 86.2 years and 83.4 years for men. In both cases, that’s almost a whole year less than had been projected <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/bulletins/nationalpopulationprojections/2015-10-29">just two years earlier</a>. And the statisticians said life expectancy would only continue to creep upwards in future. </p>
<p>As a result, and looking further ahead, a further one million earlier deaths are now projected to happen across the UK in the next 40 years by 2058. This number was not highlighted in the report. But it jumped out at us when we analysed the tables of projections published alongside it.</p>
<p>It means that the 110 years of steadily improving life expectancy in the UK are now officially over. The implications for this are huge and the reasons the statistics were revised is a tragedy on an enormous scale. </p>
<hr>
<p><strong><em>Listen to an <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-life-expectancy-in-britain-has-fallen-so-much-that-a-million-years-of-life-could-disappear-by-2058-podcast-91356">audio version</a> of this article on The Conversation’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/in-depth-out-loud-podcast-46082">In Depth Out Loud</a> podcast.</em></strong></p>
<iframe src="https://player.acast.com/5e29c8205aa745a456af58c8/episodes/5e29c8365aa745a456af58d2?theme=default&cover=1&latest=1" frameborder="0" width="100%" height="110px" allow="autoplay"></iframe>
<hr>
<h2>A rising tide of life</h2>
<p>Life expectancy is most commonly calculated from birth. It is the average number of years a new-born baby can expect to live if the mortality rates pertaining at the time of their birth apply throughout their life.</p>
<p>In 1891, life expectancy for women in England and Wales was 48 years. For men it was 44. Many people lived longer than this, but so many babies died in their first year of life that, from birth, you were doing <a href="https://visual.ons.gov.uk/how-has-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/">better than average</a> if you made it past your forties. For most of the 1890s the Conservatives were in power under Lord Salisbury. They continued to support and build on public health reforms from earlier years, such as the construction of sewers and improvements to the supply of clean piped water. Often these reforms were instigated by local government, which was able to be more proactive than it is today. Adult health improved and by 1901, on average, women lived to 52 and men 48.</p>
<p>The turn of the century saw the start of dramatic improvements in infant mortality as everyday sanitation became paramount and the condition and living standards of mothers started being taken more seriously. The Liberal prime ministers Henry Campbell-Bannerman, Herbert Henry Asquith and David Lloyd George were in charge as most of these improvements occurred. These ranged from the recognition and widespread acceptance that <a href="http://broughttolife.sciencemuseum.org.uk/broughttolife/techniques/germtheory">germs cause disease</a> through to the provision of better insurance and pensions, paid for by more <a href="http://www.historyandpolicy.org/policy-papers/papers/the-1909-budget-and-the-destruction-of-the-unwritten-constitution">progressive taxation</a>. By 1921, women lived to 60 and men to 56.</p>
<p>Life expectancy continued to soar ahead. By 1951, 30 years later, women lived to 72 and men to 66. It rose by more than a year every three years at this time, despite World War II, rationing and 1940s and 1950s austerity. Back then we really were all in it together. For women, better maternity care and the fact that <a href="http://theses.gla.ac.uk/1091/1/2001eliotvol.1phd.pdf">most did not smoke</a> had given them the edge. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196209/original/file-20171123-18012-5q9bkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196209/original/file-20171123-18012-5q9bkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/196209/original/file-20171123-18012-5q9bkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=307&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196209/original/file-20171123-18012-5q9bkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=307&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196209/original/file-20171123-18012-5q9bkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=307&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196209/original/file-20171123-18012-5q9bkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196209/original/file-20171123-18012-5q9bkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/196209/original/file-20171123-18012-5q9bkl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=385&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">National Life Tables: England and Wales 2014-2016 and 1840-2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://visual.ons.gov.uk/how-has-life-expectancy-changed-over-time/">Office for National Statistics</a>, <span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Improvements in life expectancy slowed in the 1950s under the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan. To be fair, most of the easy early wins had been achieved, such as clean water supplies and free access to health care at the point of delivery with the introduction of the NHS in 1948. Still, Macmillan tried to pretend that deaths from smog in London were due <a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1241789/">to influenza.</a> The Conservatives were never able to achieve anything as impressive for public health as Labour’s launch of the NHS, which had an immediate effect simply by boosting national morale and <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/events/nhs_at_50/special_report/123511.stm">access to care</a>, and on <a href="http://www.dannydorling.org/?page_id=2442">infant health</a>. Despite that, and with some help from the policies of Harold Wilson’s first Labour government in the 1960s, by 1971 women lived to 75 and men to 69. This improvement was <a href="http://www.dannydorling.org/?page_id=2442">driven by more spending</a> on health services, including the widespread introduction of incubators for new-born babies that needed them, as well as improvements in housing conditions.</p>
<p>In the 1970s, the rate of improvement in life expectancy across England and Wales accelerated again. To be young in those days was to feel progress all around you. People back then lived longer in the <a href="http://www.dannydorling.org/?page_id=3206">city of Sheffield</a> than the national average and, for a few years in the 1970s, the population centre of the country <a href="http://www.dannydorling.org/?page_id=1449">moved northwards</a>. Social progress in the 1970s meant that despite the terrible cutbacks in healthcare funding in the 1980s under Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government, by 1991 women were living to 79 years and men to 73. The long-term effects of more people stopping smoking in earlier decades had begun to have a particularly significant effect.</p>
<p>The next two decades, under the premierships of John Major, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, would see men catch up with women a little. This was because in the 1990s there were still many male smokers <a href="http://www.cancerresearchuk.org/sites/default/files/cstream-node/inc_asr_uk_lung_I14.png">who could give up smoking</a>. For women, the effect was less dramatic because fewer women had smoked to start off with. By 2011, women in England and Wales were living to 83 years and men to 79 years. </p>
<h2>Flatlining</h2>
<p>And then, after 2011, under the Conservative-led governments of David Cameron and Theresa May, nothing. No improvement. Life expectancy flat-lined. </p>
<p>The latest figures for the period 2014 to 2016 were published in September 2017. Women <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/datasets/nationallifetablesenglandandwalesreferencetables">can now expect</a> to live to 83.06 years and men to 79.40. For the first time in over a century, the health of people in England and Wales has stopped improving. </p>
<p>Just as Macmillan had done before in the 1950s, the 2010 coalition government <a href="http://www.dannydorling.org/wp-content/files/dannydorling_publication_id3970b.pdf">initially</a> tried to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/229832/John_Newton_Letter_Excess_Winter_Mortality.pdf">blame influenza</a>. But as the years passed and life expectancy continued to stall, it became clear that it wasn’t because of flu or an illness like it. The most plausible culprit was a combination of the particular kind of austerity for the poor and elderly that the 2010 Conservative-Liberal Democrat government so quickly enacted. </p>
<p>This led to the loss of care support to <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/02/why-are-old-people-britain-dying-their-time">half a million elderly people by 2013</a>. NHS budgets <a href="https://fullfact.org/health/spending-english-nhs/">stalled or fell slightly</a> in the years following 2010-11 and many old-age care homes <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-14102750">went bankrupt</a>. There was a rise in <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/winter-freeze-led-to-31000-extradeaths-last-year--against-a-backdrop-of-soaring-energy-prices-8965427.html">fuel-poverty among the old</a>. Sanctions and cuts to disability benefits were introduced, alongside many more aspects of increased economic callousness. </p>
<p>Those first affected were elderly women in the poorest parts of the UK. They lived in geographical areas that had been targeted by the previous Labour government for policy interventions to improve health. All those <a href="http://www.pssru.ac.uk/pub/dp2867.pdf">schemes stopped</a> after 2010. <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/02/why-are-old-people-britain-dying-their-time">Attempts throughout 2014 and 2015</a> to point out that the people’s health was deteriorating were either ignored or even rebutted by those who had been appointed by the 2010 government to safeguard the nation’s health.</p>
<p>By 2016, cuts in welfare spending, especially to older pensioners had been linked <a href="http://users.ox.ac.uk/%7Echri3110/Details/old%20age%20mortality.pdf">to a rise in deaths</a> – initially among elderly women and later <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0141076817693599">older people in general</a> living in poorer areas. Public health experts writing in the British Medical Journal <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/352/bmj.i981">called</a> for an inquiry, but none came. Instead, the government’s public health officials <a href="http://www.bmj.com/content/347/bmj.f5252.short">continued to claim</a> that: “Recent high death rates in older people are not exceptional.” </p>
<p>The situation in Scotland was even worse than that in England and Wales, but again there was no official response when <a href="http://www.dannydorling.org/wp-content/files/dannydorling_publication_id5595.pdf">this was pointed out</a>. In hindsight, there was wilful neglect by politicians, tinged by officials’ fear of upsetting their political masters in a time of savage spending cuts. </p>
<p>At first almost everyone kept quiet, but eventually it became too stark a situation to ignore. By summer 2017, Michael Marmot’s Institute of Health Equity was <a href="http://www.instituteofhealthequity.org/resources-reports/marmot-indicators-2017-institute-of-health-equity-briefing/marmot-indicators-briefing-2017-updated.pdf">linking health services cuts</a> to the rise in dementia deaths and the faltering national life expectancy. Researchers at Liverpool, Oxford, Glasgow and York universities <a href="http://eprints.gla.ac.uk/149847/1/149847.pdf">connected some of the stalling</a> in health improvements to delays in discharging patients from hospital due to insufficient older adult social care. Earlier in the year, the Financial Times <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/77fa62fe-2feb-11e7-9555-23ef563ecf9a">reported</a> that the deceleration of previous rises in life expectancy was so rapid that it had cut £310 billion from future British pension fund liabilities. And this was just for a few of the larger pension schemes.</p>
<p>On November 16, an article in the British Medical Journal Open <a href="http://bmjopen.bmj.com/content/7/11/e017722">concluded</a> that severe public spending cuts in the UK were associated with 120,000 deaths between 2010 and 2017. Just over a third of these occurred between 2012 and 2014 and almost none in 2010 or 2011. The rate of death due to austerity was rising and there was what is called a “dose-response relationship” between cuts and rising mortality. This term, commonly used as part of the evidence needed to establish that a medicine is beneficial, means that as you increase the dose of an intervention the responses to it rise at the same rate. It can also be used to indicate likely causes of harm. </p>
<p>In this case it indicated that the more cuts there have been to public health, social services and benefits – particularly for people in old age – the more earlier deaths there have been in the UK. Cuts that prevent visits by social workers to elderly people reduce their chances of being found after a fall at home. Cuts that make it harder to rehouse someone who is currently in a hospital bed back into the community, result in hospital beds not being available for others. </p>
<p>Very recently, the economist Simon Wren-Lewis also looked into the link between austerity and mortality and <a href="https://mainlymacro.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/austerity-and-mortality.html">explained</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>It is one thing for economists like me to say that austerity has cost each household at least £4,000: this can be dismissed with ‘what do economists know’? But when doctors say the policy has led to premature deaths, that is something else. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Life expectancy for women in the UK is now lower than in Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Malta, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden. Often it is <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/File:Life_expectancy_at_birth,_1980-2015_(years).png">much lower</a>. Men do little better, as the graph below shows. </p>
<p><iframe id="obFui" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/obFui/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The UK’s lowly position in the European league table mean that the stalling in life expectancy improvements has nothing to do with a limit being reached. As yet, <a href="http://www.dannydorling.org/books/demography/figures-and-tables/figure-3-1.html">nowhere has reached a limit,</a> and many countries are now far ahead of the UK.</p>
<p>In almost all other of the most affluent countries, apart from the US, people live longer lives than in the UK, often many years longer, and the best countries continue to pull away – <a href="http://www.dannydorling.org/books/economicinequality/figures-and-tables/figure-5-2.html">leaving the UK and US even further behind.</a></p>
<p>What matters most is what happens next.</p>
<h2>A million lives lost</h2>
<p>The stagnation in life expectancy is no longer being treated as a “blip”. It is now projected to be the new norm. But the ONS does not explicitly state this in its projections for the future. To calculate the figure of a million lives lost you have to subtract all the future deaths now predicted in the <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/bulletins/nationalpopulationprojections/2016basedstatisticalbulletin#changes-since-the-2014-based-projections">2017 report</a>, which was based on data from 2016, from those projected two years ago, based on a 2014 projection. </p>
<p>Every year up until at least the year 2084, people across the UK are now expected to die earlier. Already in the 12 months between July 2016 and June 2017, we calculated that an additional 39,307 more people have died than were expected to die under the previous projections. Over a third, or 13,440, of those additional deaths have been of women aged 80 or more who are now dying earlier than was expected. But 7% of these extra deaths in 2016-17 were of people aged between 20 and 60: almost 2,000 more younger men and 1,000 more younger women in this age group have died than would have if progress had not stalled. So whatever is happening is affecting young people too.</p>
<p><iframe id="OabSw" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/OabSw/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>The projection that there will be a million extra deaths by 2058 is not due to the fact that there will simply be more people living in the UK in the future. By contrast, the ONS now projects <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/bulletins/nationalpopulationprojections/2016basedstatisticalbulletin#changes-since-the-2014-based-projections">less inward migration</a>. The million extra early deaths are not due to more expected births: the ONS now projects <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/bulletins/nationalpopulationprojections/2016basedstatisticalbulletin#statisticians-comment">lower birth rates</a>. The extra million early deaths are simply the result of mortality rates either having risen or having stalled in recent years. The ONS now considers that this will have a serious impact on life expectancy in the UK and population numbers for decades to come. </p>
<p>If you are in your forties or fifties and live in the UK this is mostly about you. Almost all of the million people now projected to die earlier than before – well over four-fifths of them – will be people who are currently in this age group: 411,000 women and 404,000 men aged between 40 and 60. Child, infant mortality and still births have also not improved recently – and again this has recently <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-42144315">been linked</a> to under-funding resulting in under-staffing in the NHS.</p>
<p>It easy to dismiss these statistics with remarks such as: “people live too long nowadays anyway” and: “I wouldn’t want to live that long”. But older people are important and grandparents are often a formative part of a child’s life. Because many people in the UK are now having children <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/livebirths/bulletins/birthsbyparentscharacteristicsinenglandandwales/2015">at older ages</a>, this will translate into more people not seeing their grandchildren grow up. But, above that, longer, healthier lives have been the most important marker of social progress in Britain for well over a century. And now, for the first time in a century, we are no longer expected to see the rates of improvement we have become used to. </p>
<h2>Projections are not predictions</h2>
<p>Population estimates are always hard to make and even harder to explain. In 1990, in the New York Review of Books, the economist Amartya Sen <a href="http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1990/12/20/more-than-100-million-women-are-missing/">wrote</a> that: “More than 100m women are missing” in the world. Sen wrote that compared to men in Europe and North America: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The fate of women is quite different in most of Asia and North Africa. In these places the failure to give women medical care similar to what men get and to provide them with comparable food and social services results in fewer women surviving than would be the case if they had equal care.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>There is some irony that a quarter of a century later we now have to ask why, in one of the richest countries of the world, are we now not expecting people to enjoy as long a life as we were expecting them to just two years ago? </p>
<p>The government accepts that air pollution <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-35629034">already contributes to</a> around 40,000 premature deaths a year. Why then is there not more public outrage when an additional 39,307 deaths occurred in the year up until June 2017 than had been expected? And it happened the year after an additional 30,000 people <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0141076817693600">had already died</a> in 2015. </p>
<p>In November 2017, the ONS went on to <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/datasets/z1zippedpopulationprojectionsdatafilesuk">project</a> that there will be more than an extra 25,000 deaths between July 2017 and June 2018. Then an extra 27,000 deaths in the 12 months after that, more than an extra 28,000 deaths the year after that – and on and on and on. It now looks as if we should come to expect heightened mortality year after year until the end of our lives.</p>
<p>The government has given no reason for why this is happening. But there is absolutely no reason to suppose that this is due to something beyond our control. </p>
<p>Whatever has happened it is not a sudden worsening of the healthy behaviour of people in the UK. It is not a sudden rise in obesity or some additional carelessness about looking after ourselves. Neither obesity nor any other human behaviour linked to poor health such as smoking or drinking alcohol has seen a sudden rise. In fact, health complaints from smoking have <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/health-and-families/health-news/smoking-ban-public-10-years-ago-eight-changes-health-hospitals-pubs-teenagers-e-cigarettes-a7813696.html">plummeted</a> since the introduction of the 2007 ban on smoking in public places. The number of Britons who smoke is at <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/20/number-of-uk-smokers-falls-to-lowest-level">its lowest level</a>. </p>
<p>The proportion of adults who drink alcohol in the UK is also <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/drugusealcoholandsmoking/bulletins/opinionsandlifestylesurveyadultdrinkinghabitsingreatbritain/2005to2016#main-points">currently at its lowest level since 2005</a>. Obesity is still rising, but it has been for decades now, and the age groups now dying in high numbers – the over 80s – are <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/613532/obes-phys-acti-diet-eng-2017-rep.pdf">not yet</a> those who became obese in recent decades.</p>
<p>The most likely culprit, by far, is austerity, including the effect of the cuts to social and health care services.</p>
<p>We will not live longer by all taking responsibility just for ourselves alone, looking after just us and our families, trying to get fitter, eat better and worry less. This is not how the health of whole nations improves. It is about all of us, not just one of us. That is why it is a million years of life. And we should not allow that million to be announced quietly, like the inevitable dying of the light.</p>
<p>As we argue in <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books/about/Why_Demography_Matters.html?id=k6GPAQAACAAJ&source=kp_cover&redir_esc=y">our new book</a>, demography is not destiny. Projections are not predictions. There is no preordained inevitability that a million years of life need be lost, <a href="http://blogs.bmj.com/bmjopen/2017/11/15/health-and-social-care-spending-cuts-linked-to-120000-excess-deaths-in-england/">but already, 120,000 have been by 2017</a>.</p>
<p>The rest of those million early deaths could be avoided. There is no biological reason why life expectancy should be so low in the UK compared to almost all other affluent nations. The social sciences and epidemiologists between them have the answers, but only through politics comes the power to make the changes that are now so urgently needed.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88063/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Danny Dorling is an unpaid member of Public Health England’s mortality surveillance advisory group, an honorary Fellow of the Faculty of Public Health of the Royal Colleges and a senior associate member of the Royal Society of Medicine.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Stuart Gietel-Basten is a member of the Labour Party. </span></em></p>Life expectancy has been steadily improving in the UK for 110 years. Until now.Danny Dorling, Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography, University of OxfordStuart Gietel-Basten, Associate Professor of Social Science and Public Policy, Hong Kong University of Science and TechnologyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/607642016-06-13T15:03:46Z2016-06-13T15:03:46ZHow likely is a UK population of 80m – and would it really be a problem?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/125896/original/image-20160609-7074-8ljp3m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">JuliusKielaitis / Shutterstock.com </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Stay in the EU and the UK’s population could rise to 80m people, <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-uk-population-will-hit-80-million-if-we-stay-in-the-eu_uk_57541387e4b040e3e819a096">claim those</a> campaigning for Brexit. But looking at all the evidence and projections, it is highly unlikely that this will happen. And even if it does, I’m not sure it’s a problem. </p>
<p>The latest population projections released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in October 2015 <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/compendium/nationalpopulationprojections/2015-10-29">showed</a> that the UK population is projected to increase by 9.7m over the next 25 years, from an estimated 64.6m in mid-2014 to 74m in mid-2039. </p>
<p>Around half of this growth is projected to come from natural increases (an excess of births over deaths) and the other half from positive net migration – more people arriving in the UK than leaving. But leave campaigners have suggested that this population growth might be underestimated, and the UK population could reach nearly 80m, fuelled by high levels of migration. </p>
<p>Projecting the future is an inexact science. It involves making assumptions around the three key components of population change: fertility, mortality and migration. So, recognising that projections are uncertain and become increasingly so the further forward in time we go, the ONS also produces a range of alternative scenarios, as the graph below shows. The most <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/compendium/nationalpopulationprojections/2015-10-29/summaryresults">extreme of these</a> – where we assume that fertility, life expectancy and migration all rise significnatly – results in a population of 79.1m by 2039. </p>
<iframe id="datawrapper-chart-HG2Fn" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/HG2Fn/3/" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="400"></iframe>
<h2>High-rise assumptions</h2>
<p>But how realistic is this? First, it assumes that the number of children a woman would have, on average, over her reproductive lifetime will rise to 2.09. The last time the UK experienced fertility rates at that level was in the <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/resources/tfrchart2014large_tcm77-410957.png">1960s</a>.</p>
<p>Bearing in mind that this is the average, and a growing proportion of couples are choosing to have <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/conceptionandfertilityrates/bulletins/childbearingforwomenbornindifferentyearsenglandandwales/2015-11-10">one or no children</a>, for total fertility to rise to 2.09 means that more families will need to have three, four or even more children. Most family demographers suggest, however, that <a href="https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/populationandmigration/populationprojections/compendium/nationalpopulationprojections/2015-10-29/fertilityassumptions">fertility will remain stable</a> or even fall as more women stay in education and then work full-time. </p>
<p>It is also important to remember that fertility levels in the EU countries accounting for the major flows of migrants, such as Poland, <a href="http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/File:Total_fertility_rate,_1960%E2%80%932014_%28live_births_per_woman%29_YB16.png">are currently lower</a> than in the UK. So the argument that the higher fertility of migrants will drive up average UK fertility is not clear cut.</p>
<p>The 80m figure also assumes the rate of mortality will improve by 2.4% a year until 2030, twice the level of improvement in the ONS’s principal projection. This means average life expectancy at birth in the UK will be 86 for men and 88.7 years for women. Although there have been dramatic improvements in life expectancy over the past century as a result of changes in living standards and improvements in medical treatments, many commentators now think that the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/403477/Recent_trends_in_life_expectancy_at_older_ages.pdf">rate of improvement</a> is slowing down. </p>
<p>The longer-term impact of factors such as increased air pollution and rising obesity is, however, difficult to assess. In determining the assumptions used in its projections, the ONS assembled a panel of leading experts: their view was that an improvement in mortality of 1.2% was the most realistic.</p>
<p>Finally, the figure of 80m also assumes higher migration than the ONS’s principal projection, with long-term annual net international migration of 265,000 a year instead of the central assumption of 185,000. Of all the three components of population change, migration is the most difficult to predict. </p>
<p>Recognising this, the ONS <a href="http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160105160709/http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/method-quality/specific/population-and-migration/population-projections/npp-migration-assumptions-methodology-review/index.html">commissioned a review of its methodology</a> and the latest projections include new estimates of long-term migration. It’s difficult to say what will happen in 25 years. If we wound the clock back to 1990 we certainly would have not have predicted the last 25 years. But again, many commentators think that the current flows will stabilise and may even reverse. </p>
<h2>Is Britain full up?</h2>
<p>A frequent argument against further population growth is that Britain is full. The evidence for this, however, is not incontrovertible. According to the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/">latest estimates</a> from the Population Division of the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs, the population density of the world is estimated at around 56.5 people per km². In the UK, it is currently around 267.5 people per km², so compared with the global average you might argue that Britain is indeed “full”.</p>
<p>But we need to remember that there are significant areas of the world that are very sparsely inhabited: in Mongolia, population density is just under two people per km². As the graph below shows, there are other countries where people live in very close proximity – the country with the highest population density is actually in Europe, where Monaco has 25,322 inhabitants per km². </p>
<iframe id="datawrapper-chart-3EhH1" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/3EhH1/2/" frameborder="0" allowtransparency="true" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" webkitallowfullscreen="webkitallowfullscreen" mozallowfullscreen="mozallowfullscreen" oallowfullscreen="oallowfullscreen" msallowfullscreen="msallowfullscreen" width="100%" height="421"></iframe>
<p>If the UK’s population were to grow from its current 64m to 80m, this would definitely increase our population density but we would still be below that of some of our European neighbours including the Netherlands and Belgium. A high population density is also not necessarily a problem if the growth is properly planned for, with essential services such as housing made available.</p>
<p>We may not wish to live in high-rise Singapore, but in reality, such high-density urban living is very efficient in terms of resources. It is the concentration of people in towns over the last 200 years that facilitated the industrial and then the technological revolutions. </p>
<p>Population growth also increases the supply of both workers and consumers, and over the long run, <a href="https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=6imRcAJPhnoC&pg=PT39&lpg=PT39&dq=Production+and+reproduction:+the+significance+of+population+history+tony+wrigley&source=bl&ots=uAaH1-7tU_&sig=QH2BTB6cyfnmThGaotAqTxHevOI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjKurq-zqTNAhUFIMAKHbSaBOYQ6AEIKDAB#v=onepage&q=Production%20and%20reproduction%3A%20the%20significance%20of%20population%20history%20tony%20wrigley&f=false">economic historians</a> have found a positive link between the two. Rapid population growth can, however, present problems in the short-term if economic productivity or the supply of education and health care fails to keep pace. So population size <em>per se</em> is not the problem – it is how we deal with it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/60764/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jane Falkingham receives funding from the Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC). This article does not reflect the views of the research councils. </span></em></p>Some scenarios put the UK population at just under 80m by 2039. Here are the facts.Jane Falkingham, Dean of the Faculty of Social, Human and Mathematical Sciences, University of SouthamptonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.