United Kingdom Census 2001

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Form used to poll English households during the 2001 Census. Census 2001.png
Form used to poll English households during the 2001 Census.

A nationwide census, known as Census 2001, was conducted in the United Kingdom on Sunday, 29 April 2001. This was the 20th UK census and recorded a resident population of 58,789,194.

Census Acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population

A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. The term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses include agriculture, business, and traffic censuses. The United Nations defines the essential features of population and housing censuses as "individual enumeration, universality within a defined territory, simultaneity and defined periodicity", and recommends that population censuses be taken at least every 10 years. United Nations recommendations also cover census topics to be collected, official definitions, classifications and other useful information to co-ordinate international practice.

Census in the United Kingdom

Coincident full censuses have taken place in the different jurisdictions of the United Kingdom every ten years since 1801, with the exceptions of 1941 and Ireland in 1921. Simultaneous censuses were taken in the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man, with the returns being archived with those of England. In addition to providing detailed information about national demographics, the results of the census play an important part in the calculation of resource allocation to regional and local service providers by the governments of both the UK and the European Union. The most recent UK census took place in 2011.

Contents

The 2001 UK census was organised by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in England and Wales, the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA). Detailed results by region, council area, ward and output area are available from their respective websites.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) is the executive office of the UK Statistics Authority, a non-ministerial department which reports directly to the UK Parliament.

England and Wales Administrative jurisdiction within the United Kingdom

England and Wales is a legal jurisdiction covering England and Wales, two of the four nations of the United Kingdom. "England and Wales" forms the constitutional successor to the former Kingdom of England and follows a single legal system, known as English law.

General Register Office for Scotland

The General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) was a non-ministerial directorate of the Scottish Government that administered the registration of births, deaths, marriages, divorces and adoptions in Scotland. It was also responsible for the statutes relating to the formalities of marriage and conduct of civil marriage in Scotland. It administered the census of Scotland's population every ten years. It also kept the Scottish National Health Service Central Register. On 1 April 2011 it was merged with the National Archives of Scotland to form National Records of Scotland. All the former department's functions continue as part of the new body.

Organisation

Similar to previous UK censuses, the 2001 census was organised by the three statistical agencies, ONS, GROS, and NISRA, and coordinated at the national level by the Office for National Statistics. The Orders in Council to conduct the census, specifying the people and information to be included in the census, were made under the authority of the Census Act 1920 in Great Britain, and the Census Act (Northern Ireland) 1969 in Northern Ireland. In England and Wales these regulations were made by the Census Order 2000 (SI 744/2000), in Scotland by the Census (Scotland) Order 2000 (SSI 68/2000), and in Northern Ireland by the Census Order (Northern Ireland) 2000 (SRNI 168/2000). [1]

Census Act 1920

The Census Act 1920 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Providing for a census for Great Britain, on a date to be fixed by Order in Council, it remains the primary legislation for the provision of the UK census in England, Scotland, and Wales. A minimum of five years is required between censuses.

Census Act (Northern Ireland) 1969

The Census Act 1969 was an Act of the Parliament of Northern Ireland, passed 24 June 1969. It enabled ministers to order a census of population in Northern Ireland at intervals of five years or more. The Act shares similarities with the Census Act 1920 which provides for censuses in England, Scotland, and Wales. It remains the primary legislation for conducting censuses in Northern Ireland.

The census was administered through self-completion forms, in most cases delivered by enumerators to households and communal establishments in the three weeks before census night on 29 April. For the first time return by post was used as the main collection method, with enumerators following up in person where the forms were not returned. The postal response rate was 88% in England and Wales, [2] 91% in Scotland, [3] and 92% in Northern Ireland. [4] A total of 81,000 field staff were employed across the UK (70,000 in England and Wales, 8,000 in Scotland and 3,000 in Northern Ireland). [1] The census was conducted at the height of the foot-and-mouth crisis, which led to extra precautions being adopted by the field staff, and suggestions that the census may have to be postponed. [5] However, it was reported that the disease outbreak did not affect the effectiveness of the collection process. [6] [7]

The census was estimated to cost £259m over its 13-year cycle from the start of planning in 1993 to the delivery of final results in 2006. [8] [9] Printing of the 30 million census forms was subcontracted to Polestar Group, and processing of the returned census forms was subcontracted to Lockheed Martin in a contract worth £54m. [10] The forms were initially scanned into digital format, then read with OMR and OCR, with manual entry where the automatic process could not read the forms. The forms were then pulped and recycled, and the digital copies printed onto microfilm for storage and release after 100 years. Once the data were returned to the statistics agencies it underwent further processing to ensure consistency and to impute missing values.

Lockheed Martin Corporation is an American global aerospace, defense, security and advanced technologies company with worldwide interests. It was formed by the merger of Lockheed Corporation with Martin Marietta in March 1995. It is headquartered in North Bethesda, Maryland, in the Washington, DC, area. Lockheed Martin employs approximately 100,000 people worldwide as of December 2017.

Optical mark recognition is the process of capturing human-marked data from document forms such as surveys and tests. They are used to read questionnaires, multiple choice examination paper in the form of lines or shady areas.

Optical character recognition Computer recognition of visual text

Optical character recognition or optical character reader, often abbreviated as OCR, is the mechanical or electronic conversion of images of typed, handwritten or printed text into machine-encoded text, whether from a scanned document, a photo of a document, a scene-photo or from subtitle text superimposed on an image.

Enumeration

The overall response rate for the census, that is the proportion of the population who were included on a census form, was estimated to be 94% in England and Wales, [11] 96.1% in Scotland [12] and 95.2% in Northern Ireland. [13] This was due to a number of factors: households with no response, households excluding residents from their returns, and addresses not included in the enumeration. In Manchester for example 25,000 people from 14,000 addresses were not enumerated because the address database was two years out of date. [14] [15] The Local Authority with the lowest response was Kensington and Chelsea with 64%. Hackney had the next lowest response at 72%. Out of all local authorities, the ten lowest response rates were all in London. [11] The results still represent 100 per cent of the population, however, because some individuals not completing their forms were instead identified by census enumerators, and through the use of cross-matching with a follow-up survey. [16]

Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Royal borough in United Kingdom

The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) is an inner London borough with royal status. It is the smallest borough in London and the second smallest district in England; it is one of the most densely populated administrative regions in the United Kingdom. It includes affluent areas such as Notting Hill, Central Kensington, South Kensington, Chelsea, and Knightsbridge.

London Borough of Hackney Borough in United Kingdom

The London Borough of Hackney is a London Borough in Inner London, United Kingdom. The historical and administrative heart of Hackney is Mare Street, which lies 5 miles (8 km) north-east of Charing Cross. The borough is named after Hackney, its principal district.

One Number Census

The results from the 2001 census were produced using a methodology known as the One Number Census. [17] This was an attempt to adjust the census counts and impute answers to allow for estimated under-enumeration measured by the Census Coverage Survey (sample size 320,000 households), resulting in a single set of population estimates. [18]

Religion

Although the 1851 census had included a question about religion on a separate response sheet, whose completion was not compulsory, the 2001 census was the first in Great Britain to ask about the religion of respondents on the main census form.[ citation needed ] An amendment to the 1920 Census Act (the Census (Amendment) Act 2000) was passed by Parliament to allow the question to be asked, and to allow the response to this question to be optional. [19] [20] The inclusion of the question enabled the Jedi census phenomenon to take place in the United Kingdom. In England and Wales 390,127 people stated their religion as Jedi, as did 14,052 people in Scotland. [21] The percentages of religious affiliations were:

15% declared themselves of no religion (including Jedi at 0.7%, so more than declared themselves as Sikh, Jewish or Buddhist) and 8% did not respond to the question. [22]

Neopaganism

After the 2001 census it became clear that the statistics for those adhering to the Neopagan group of religions were inaccurately recorded. This was caused by a dilution of statistics, with some adherents entering "Pagan" and others entering their individual religions such as "Wiccan" or "Druid", which fall under the umbrella term of "Pagan", leaving a significant number of people apparently unaccounted for. The situation was worsened when the Heathenism statistics were grouped in with Atheism by the Office for National Statistics.[ citation needed ]

The Pagan Federation and the "PaganDash" campaign lobbied for a separate tickbox for Paganism on the 2011 census, but were ultimately unsuccessful.

Ethnicity

Results

The census ethnic groups included White (White British, White Irish, Other White), Mixed (White and Black Caribbean, White and Black African, White and Asian, Other Mixed), Asian or Asian British (Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Other Asian), Black or Black British (Black Caribbean, African, Other Black) and Chinese or Other Ethnic Group.

Ethnic group Population % of total*
White British 50,366,497 85.67%
White (other) 3,096,169 5.27%
Indian 1,053,411 1.8%
Pakistani 747,285 1.3%
White Irish 691,232 1.2%
Mixed race 677,117 1.2%
Black Caribbean 565,876 1.0%
Black African 485,277 0.8%
Bangladeshi 283,063 0.5%
Other Asian (non-Chinese) 247,664 0.4%
Chinese 247,403 0.4%
Other 230,615 0.4%
Black (others) 97,585 0.2%
Total 58,789,194100%
* Percentage of total UK population

Since the UK census relies on self-completion, [23] the composition of the other ethnic group category is not fixed. Analysis by the Office for National Statistics of the 220,000 people in England and Wales who ticked the other ethnic group box in the 2001 census reveals that 53 per cent were born in the Far East, 10 per cent in the UK, 10 per cent in the Middle East, and 7 per cent in Africa. [24] People could write in an ethnic group under the 'other' heading. 26 per cent did not specify an ethnicity, but of the remainder 23 per cent wrote Filipino, 21 per cent Japanese, 11 per cent Vietnamese, 11 per cent Arab, 6 per cent Middle Eastern and 4 per cent North African. [24]

English identity

Controversy surrounding the classification of ethnic groups began as early as 2000, when it was revealed that respondents in Scotland and Northern Ireland would be able to check a box describing themselves as Scottish or Irish, an option not available for English respondents. [25] With an absence of an English tick-box, the only other tickbox available was "white-British", "Irish", or "other". However, if 'English' was written in under the "any other white background" it was not clear whether it would be counted as an ethnic group in same the way as the Welsh. [25] Following criticism, English was included as a tick-box option in the 2011 census. [26] [27]

Welsh identity

It is sometimes claimed that the 2001 census revealed that two-thirds of the population of Wales described themselves as of Welsh nationality. [28] In fact, the 2001 census did not collect any information on nationality. Controversy surrounding the classification of ethnic group began as early as 2000, when it was revealed that respondents in Scotland and Northern Ireland would be able to check a box describing themselves as Scottish or Irish, an option not available for Welsh respondents. [29] [30] Prior to the census, Plaid Cymru backed a petition calling for the inclusion of a Welsh tickbox and for the National Assembly of Wales to have primary law-making powers and its own National Statistics Office. [29] With an absence of a Welsh tickbox, the only other tickbox available was "white-British", "Irish", or "other". [28] [29]

Cornish identity

For the first time in a UK census, those wishing to describe their ethnicity as Cornish were given their own code number (06) on the 2001 UK census form, alongside those for people wishing to describe themselves as English, Welsh, Irish or Scottish. About 34,000 people in Cornwall and 3,500 people in the rest of the UK wrote on their census forms in 2001 that they considered their ethnic group to be Cornish. [31] This represented nearly 7% of the population of Cornwall. Various Cornish organisations were campaigning for the inclusion of the Cornish tick box on the next census in 2011. [32]

See also

Related Research Articles

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Religion in the United Kingdom religion in the United Kingdom

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Welsh people nation and ethnic group native to Wales

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White British is an ethnicity classification used in the 2011 United Kingdom Census. In the 2011 census, the White British population was 51,736,290, 81.9% of the UK total population.

Census (Amendment) Act 2000

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The term Other White is a classification of ethnicity in the United Kingdom and has been used in documents such as the 2011 UK Census to describe people who self-identify as white persons who are not of the English, Welsh, Scottish or Irish ethnic groupings. The category does not comprise a single ethnic group but is instead a method of identification for white people who are not represented by other white census categories. This means that the Other White group contains a diverse collection of people with different countries of birth, languages and religions. Along with White British and White Irish, the category does not appear in Northern Ireland, where only one single "White" classification was presented to respondents.

Neopaganism in the United Kingdom

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Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, in the United Kingdom. At the 2011 census it had a population of 536,000. Cornwall is the homeland of the Cornish people and many within Cornwall identify with a Cornish ethnic or national identity, although due to Cornwall's political status as part of England, the United Kingdom and the European Union, as well as in-migration from other parts of the UK and EU, additional identities such as English, British and European may also be adopted.

References

  1. 1 2 Office for National Statistics, General Register Office for Scotland, Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (2004). Census 2001 Definitions. London: The Stationery Office. ISBN   0-11-621754-5
  2. ↑ Office for National Statistics (2005), Census 2001: General report for England and Wales. p. 40. ISBN   1-4039-8768-8.
  3. ↑ General Register Office for Scotland, Taking Scotland's 2001 Census – A Review: Part 2, Census Operations Archived 25 November 2010 at the Wayback Machine .. p. 19. June 2002.
  4. ↑ The Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (2006), Northern Ireland Census 2001: General Report Archived 17 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine .. p. 16. London:HMSO. ISBN   0-337-08773-3
  5. ↑ Paul Brown and Nicholas Watt. Threat to census as disease cases grow. The Guardian. 1 March 2001.
  6. ↑ BBC News. Census shows Welsh language rise. 14 February 2003.
  7. ↑ National Statistics. 2001 Census Field Operation Report. 26 November 2001.
  8. ↑ Graham Vidler. The 2001 Census of Population Archived 20 November 2006 at the Wayback Machine .. Research Paper 01/21. House of Commons Library. ISSN   1368-8456
  9. ↑ P. Boyle and D. Dorling. Guest editorial: the 2001 UK census: remarkable resource or bygone legacy of the 'pencil and paper era'? . Area, Volume 36, Number 2, June 2004, p. 104.
  10. ↑ BBC News. Census data security fear denied. 7 February 2008.
  11. 1 2 Office for National Statistics. Census 2001: National and local response rates, last revised 13 January 2006.
  12. ↑ Bernard Baffour. Modelling Census Under-Enumeration Archived 1 January 2011 at the Wayback Machine .. General Register Office for Scotland, Occasional Paper No 13. October 2006. p2.
  13. ↑ Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. The methodological approach to the 2001 Census Archived 17 February 2010 at the Wayback Machine .
  14. ↑ Boyle and Dorling (2004) p106.
  15. ↑ BBC News. Census 'lost' 25,000 people. 4 November 2003.
  16. ↑ "The Big Number: Census 2001 reveals UK population is 58,789,194" (PDF). Office for National Statistics. 30 September 2002. p. 3. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 June 2011. Retrieved 27 September 2010.
  17. ↑ "Census 2001" . Retrieved 1 November 2008.
  18. ↑ National Statistics: The One Number Census - an estimate of the whole population
  19. ↑ National Statistics, Census 2001, Legislation and the role of Parliament, Nov 2005
  20. ↑ Explanatory Notes to Census (Amendment) Act 2000 Archived 7 July 2009 at the Wayback Machine .
  21. ↑ "statistics.gov.uk". Ethnicity and Religion: Jedi. Retrieved 20 November 2006.
  22. ↑ National Statistics Online - Religious Populations
  23. ↑ "Ethnic group statistics: A guide for the collection and classification of ethnicity data" (PDF). Office for National Statistics. 2003. p. 9. Archived from the original (PDF) on 19 April 2009. Retrieved 21 October 2009.
  24. 1 2 Gardener, David; Connolly, Helen (October 2005). "Who are the 'Other' ethnic groups?" (PDF). Office for National Statistics. Archived from the original (PDF) on 28 May 2008. Retrieved 22 June 2008.
  25. 1 2 Johnston, Philip (23 April 2001). "Tory MP leads English protest over census". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 2 May 2010.
  26. ↑ English tick box, No 10 e-petition response Archived 11 January 2012 at the Wayback Machine .
  27. ↑ 2011 Census tick-box for 'English' national identity Archived 6 January 2009 at the Wayback Machine .
  28. 1 2 Census shows Welsh language rise. Friday 14 February 2003. Retrieved 12-04-07
  29. 1 2 3 Census equality backed by Plaid 23 September 2000 extracted 12-04-07
  30. ↑ Census results 'defy tickbox row'. 30 September 2002. Retrieved 12-04-07
  31. ↑ from The London School of Economics and Political Science website
  32. ↑ Cornish demand tick box for 2011 Census
Preceded by
1991 		UK Census
2001 		Succeeded by
2011
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