IN 1837, the year Queen Victoria ascended to the throne, the combined population of England and Wales was approximately 15 million.
In 2021, just five monarchs later (and Edward VIII barely counts) the population of the same area was 59,597,300; an increase of 300 per cent.
We know these figures because of the results of censuses taken almost every decade in the intervening years.
Census data can be an interesting snapshot which has the potential to tell us something about the time we live in.
More than 24 million households across England and Wales filled in census questionnaires in spring last year, with a record 89 per cent of responses completed online.
The first results from this census, carried out on March 21, were released this week, and showed that the population of England and Wales rose by 3.5 million in the last decade.
This is despite the count coming against the backdrop of both Brexit, which has seen new restrictions on immigration, and the coronavirus pandemic.
Indeed, the census was taken at a time when coronavirus restrictions were still in place across the UK, with people only allowed to leave their homes in England for recreation and exercise outdoors with their household or support bubble, or with one person outside their household, and the rule-of-six on outside gatherings not coming into place until the end of March.
Assessing what’s driving the rise is tricky, and not just because things are constantly in flux.
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Pete Benton, ONS deputy national statistician, said the figures ‘begin to paint a rich and detailed snapshot of the nation and how we were living during the pandemic’.
He said: “Since census day, the world has continued to change.
“People continue to move home, some people will have left the country, others will have arrived.
“People will have changed jobs, some of us now work in offices once again, while others continue to work from home.
“We need to understand all of this and more.”
Divining the reasons behind population fluctuations is complex but it will be interesting to see if they continue as trends over the longer term.
And what appears to be the case is that although the population is still growing rapidly, the growth rate - the percentage increase - is lower from 2011-2021 (6.3 per cent) than it was in the ten previous years (7.8 per cent).
So maybe immigration curbs, economic slowdowns and global pandemics are beginning to have an affect.
Locally, the figures provide perhaps more questions than answers.
The population has risen in north Cumbria - although by slightly less than the national rate. Carlisle has seen a rise of 2.3 per cent; Eden by 4.1 per cent.
But in west Cumbria, the population has fallen.
In Copeland, for example, it’s dropped by 5 per cent. In Allerdale, it's fallen by 0.3 per cent, from around 96,400 in 2011 to 96,100 in 2021.
And the age profiles of these areas are also shifting.
Carlisle’s population is growing older; a bump is moving up through the population ‘pyramid’.
A decade ago, the population of Carlisle was made up of 10.8 per cent under-10s and 18.5 per cent over-65s, but this had changed to 10.5 per cent and 21.7 per cent respectively by 2021.
The most numerous age bracket in both males and females is the 55-59 year old crowd, whereas there are fewer people in their late teens and early twenties.
In Eden, the most sparsely populated area in England, the population has increased by 4.1 per cent, from around 52,600 in 2011 to 54,700 in 2021.
In the green district, each person has five football pitches’ worth of space.
By contrast, in Tower Hamlets, London, the most densely populated part of the country, there are 112 people ‘per pitch’.
Data on sex were released and they show that the country is more female than male. Women and girls outnumber men and boys in all but 13 local authority areas.
The balance of men and women in the area has changed in Carlisle – the city’s population is now 49 per cent male and 51 per cent female, meaning there is now a slightly higher proportion of men in the area than 10 years ago.
The data released this week covers population, age and sex data, but there is more to come from the ONS.
Data from the 2021 census for England and Wales will be published in stages over the next two years, the ONS said.
Future releases will include figures on ethnicity, religion, the labour market, education and housing plus, for the first time, information on UK armed forces veterans, sexual orientation and gender identity.
It will be fascinating to delve into these figures and attempt to explain what they tell us about the way we live now.
Census results are used by a range of organisations including governments, councils and businesses, and underpin everything from the calculation of economic growth and unemployment to helping plan schools, health services and transport links.
How we meet the opportunities of fluctuating populations over the near and long term will be the job of our elected representatives over the coming years.
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