England and Wales Census

There were 56.1 million people living in England and Wales on the day of Census 2011, 3.7 million more than in 2001 when there were 52.4 million people. This represents an increase of seven per cent.
The population of England was 53 million while Wales was 3.06 million. Northern Ireland's population also rose to 1.8 million, an increase from around 1.7 million in 2001.


The total population figure was about half a million larger than estimates had shown a year earlier, when it was expected it would have risen to 55.6 million.
The results show that every region in England and Wales had a larger population in 2011 than 10 years earlier.

The largest increase in population was in London, which grew by 12 per cent, gaining more than 850,000 inhabitants and taking its total population to more than eight million.
The figures show how people in England and Wales are increasingly living for longer, with a rise of 16.4 per cent of people aged 65 and over. This means that one in six people in England and Wales was aged 65 and over in 2011.

Of these, 430,000 people were aged 90 and over, compared with only 13,000 when the census was carried out 100 years earlier in 1911. The number of women over 90 was 315,000, nearly three times higher than the 114,000 men recorded as being over that age.
In 11 local authorities more than a quarter of the population was aged 65 or over, with the highest being Christchurch in Dorset with 30 per cent.

It shows the median age of the population has increased to 39 in 2011, up from 35 in 2001 and 25 in 1911.
But there was also an increase in the number of under-fives, with 405,700 more in 2011 compared when the survey was conducted a decade before. This was explained by a rise in the number of women of childbearing age because of inward migration. The local authority with the largest proportion of children under five was the London borough of Barking and Dagenham, at 10 per cent.

On average 105 males are born for every 100 females, however, in 2011 females consistently outnumbered males for every year from 35 upwards.
The average household size of 2.4 people has remained unchanged from 2001. The number of households has risen by eight per cent compared to a decade ago, with 23.4 million households in England and Wales in 2011 compared to 21.7 in 2001.