Northern Ireland - Demography

Demography

The population of Northern Ireland has increased annually since 1978. The population in 2010 was estimated to be just under 1.8 million, up from just under 1.7 million in the 2001 UK census. This constitutes just under 3% of the population of the United Kingdom (62 million) and just over 28% of the population of the island of Ireland (6.3 million).

In terms of ethnicity, the population of Northern Ireland is almost entirely white (99.15%). 91% of people are Northern Ireland born, with 4.8% being born elsewhere in the UK and 2.3% being born in the Republic of Ireland. Irish Travellers accounted for 0.1% of the population. The largest non-white ethnic groups were Asians (0.4%), of which Chinese accounted for 60.7%, Indian for 23% and Pakistani for 9.8% of the total. Black people of various origins accounted for 0.06% of the population of Northern Ireland and people of mixed ethnicity accounted for 0.2%.

In the 2001 census, 45.6% of the population identified as belonging to Protestant or other non-Roman Catholic denominations. The largest of these denominations were the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and the Church of Ireland and the Methodist Church in Ireland being 20.7%, 15.3% and 3.5% of the total population respectively. The largest single denomination is the Roman Catholic Church, to which is the 40.3% of the population identified. Additionally, 6.1% of the population are Christian or Christian related and 0.3% identified with non-Christian religions, while 13.9% identified with no religion. In terms of community background (i.e. one's own religion or the religion one was brought up in), 53.1% of the Northern Ireland's population came from a Protestant background, 43.8% came from a Catholic background, 0.4% from non-Christian backgrounds and 2.7% non-religious backgrounds in the same census.