Population growth is a charged issue in the UK, but using it as a proxy for concerns about migration is misleading
England and Wales have the “largest population ever recorded”, the Office for National Statistics trumpets in its first 2021 census bulletin, released today. You might get the impression from its placement at the top of the bulletin that this new record is interesting or surprising, or that it has some relevance for public policy.
In reality, the fact that the population of England and Wales is 59.5 million tells us very little. What is more interesting is the speed of population growth (which has declined, from 7.8% in the 2000s to 6.3% in the 2010s). But even then, working out how much we should care is a tricky exercise.
Rob McNeil is deputy director of the Migration Observatory and a researcher at the Centre on Migration, Policy and Society (COMPAS) at the University of Oxford, specialising in the coverage of migration by media around the world
