Country Resource - United Kingdom
- Population............................................................................68,138,484 (2023 est.)
- Population growth rate .................................................................0.49% (2023 est.)
- Birth rate.....................................................10.8 births/1,000 population (2023 est.)
- Death rate..................................................9.12 deaths/1,000 population (2023 est.)
- Net migration rate.................................3.23 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2023 est.)
- Ethnic groups..............................White 87.2%, Black/African/Caribbean/black British 3%, Asian/Asian British: Indian 2.3%, Asian/Asian British: Pakistani 1.9%, mixed 2%, other 3.7% (2011 est.)
Note: Constituent countries by percentage of total population: England 84.3%, Scotland 8.2%, Wales 4.6%, Northern Ireland 2.8%
CIA World Factbook
The United Kingdom was once a country primarily of emigration, but in recent decades many more migrants have arrived at its borders than have left. This decades-long transition was interrupted by Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, and this article describes the inflection point at which the country finds itself.
Recent Activity
Since 1999, concern about immigration in Britain has reached levels never seen before in the history of public opinion research, and surveys show strong support for tougher immigration laws. But opinions vary: younger, better-educated people and those who tend to live in areas with a longer history of immigration are more tolerant than older, less-educated people in more settled communities with low levels of immigration.
“Good integration” happens every day in different areas around the country, either as a unified response to a tragic event, in the private sphere, or in the successful performance of some ethnic minorities in education and employment.Yet, in some respects, communities are moving apart, pulled or sometimes pushed, by their own choices.
This paper intends to provide a baseline of evidence for policymakers seeking to calibrate their immigration policy responses to the economic downturn, with a focus on the UK.
This report examines the advantages and disadvantages of two fundamentally different approaches to economic migrant selection—demand driven and employer led systems and human-capital-accumulation focused and government led systems, best illustrated by “points systems,” which apportion numerical values to desirable human-capital characteristics.
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