A viral claim that London’s white population has supposedly collapsed from almost 100% to just 34% has been demolished by the census data, but the way the statistic has been constructed is perhaps even more revealing than the headline itself.
Posts circulating online claim that the white population of London has “plummeted from 98% to 34%”.
It hasn’t.
The latest available census, conducted in 2021, found that 53.8% of London residents identified as white. That is more than half the capital’s population and almost 20 percentage points higher than the figure being circulated.
So where does the 34% figure come from?
It appears to involve conflating White British with white people generally.
In 2021, 36.8% of Londoners identified as “White: English, Welsh, Scottish, Northern Irish or British”. But another 17% identified as “White: Other”.
That latter category includes people identifying as White Irish, Gypsy or Irish Traveller, Roma and people from other white backgrounds.
Add those categories together and the result is 53.8%.
The difference is not a minor statistical technicality. It completely changes the picture.
There has certainly been major demographic change in London. The proportion identifying as white fell from 79.8% in 1991 to 59.8% in 2011 and 53.8% in 2021.
But that real change does not justify manufacturing a figure of 34%.
Nor is it legitimate to claim that London was 97% or 98% white in 1961 and directly compare that supposed figure with the modern census.
The reason is straightforward: the 1961 Census did not ask people to identify their ethnicity or race. It collected information including country of birth. The UK Census did not introduce an ethnicity question until 1991.
That means the apparently dramatic “98% to 34%” comparison isn’t simply inaccurate. It combines fundamentally different measurements and then presents the result as though they were directly comparable.
This is precisely why statistics need context.
Demographic change is a legitimate subject for debate. London is considerably more ethnically diverse than it was several decades ago. The census provides ample evidence of that transformation.
But there is no need to invent numbers to demonstrate it.
And when a social media post takes a real demographic trend, strips away the definitions, substitutes incomparable historical data and then produces a sensational headline, readers should ask a simple question:
What exactly is being measured?
In this case, the answer destroys the viral claim.
The white population of London is not 34%.
According to the 2021 Census, it is 53.8%.
The truth may be less sensational than the viral version, but it is considerably more useful.
Thanks to Full Fact.
