Demographics of London

London had about 860,000 people in 1801 (by comparison, Paris had about 670,000 in 1802), and the population of Edo (modern-day Tokyo, Japan), at the time the largest city in the world, has been estimated at 1 million to 1.25 million people. London was the most populous city in the world from 1825 until 1925, when it was overtaken by New York.

The city and the 32 boroughs had an estimated 7,429,200 inhabitants as of July 1, 2004 [4], making London the second most populous city in Europe behind Moscow (10,415,400 inhabitants in 2005). In the 2001 census, 71% of these seven million people classed their ethnic group as white (classified as British White (60%), Irish White (3%) or “Other White” (8%) in the 2001 census), 10% as Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi or “Other Asian” (mostly Sri Lankan and other South Asian ethnicities), 5% as black African, 5% as black Caribbean, 1% as “Other Black”, 3% as mixed race, 1% as Chinese and 2% as Other (mostly Filipino, Japanese, and Vietnamese).

The largest religious groupings are Christian (58.2%), No Religion (15.8%), Muslim (7.2%), Hindu (4.1%), Jewish (2.1%), and Sikh (1.5%). 21.8% of inhabitants were born outside the European Union. The Irish are the largest foreign-born group in London (numbering approximately 200,000). In January 2005, The Guardian newspaper published a survey of London’s ethnic and religious diversity [5], which claimed that there were more than 300 languages spoken and 50 non-indigenous communities of more than 10,000 population in London.

The population of the urban area of London at the 2001 census, as calculated by the Office for National Statistics, was 8,278,251 inhabitants [6]. London’s urban area is the third-largest in Europe, behind Moscow (11.7 million inhabitants in 2000) and Paris (9.6 million inhabitants in 1999).

Unlike many other countries, the UK does not provide national metropolitan area population figures based on commuter percentages and economic influence. This is left up to each individual city to define. This has created some confusion when comparing London’s true metropolitan area region with others around the world. It is helped even less by confusion of the term “Greater London” with the political entity of the City of London, which is often confused with the metropolitan area.

Without a specific national reference to London’s metropolitan area, different sources provide alternate definitions. One such definition describes the London metropolitan area (6,267 square miles, 16,043 km²) with a population of 13,945,000 (in 2001) [7]; larger than the combined populations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. If this definition is followed, then London is the largest metropolitan area of Europe, along with Moscow (whose metropolitan area has somewhere around 14 million people), and above Paris (11.5 million people in the metropolitan area in 2004). However, the definition used here for the metropolitan area of London should be taken with a lot of caution, as it includes areas quite far away from London, such as Dover, right by the English Channel, or Colchester, in the very north of Essex. Discounting eastern Kent, northern Essex, and West Berkshire, the figure is closer to 12 million to 12.5 million people.

In 2004, the Greater London Authority defined a “metropolitan region” centred on London with a population of 18 million. This “metropolitan region” extends to cover much of the South East England and part of the East of England administrative regions, including places as far away as Oxford or the Isle of Wight ([8], [9], [10]).