Will 'White British' really be a minority in 40 years time?

I tried to crunch the numbers and was surprised

The past month has brought a battery of anxious publications on the subjects of immigration, Britishness and population change, starting with a report from the Centre for Heterodox Social Science (CHSS) forecasting that the White British population of the UK will have become a minority by 2063.

Also of note were an article by David Goodhart in the Evening Standard on demographic change in London and a long-read from Conservative MP Neil O’Brien citing immigration as one of a confluence of factors contributing to UK decline.

As someone with a sensitive radar for bold statistical claims, I was particularly struck by the claim about ‘white British’ becoming a minority.

Where does this figure come from?

The CHSS report was written by frequent commentator on these topics and advocate for lower immigration, Matt Goodwin. But having a personal bias doesn’t prevent one from designing a robust method - so I kept an open mind.

But looking closely at the CHSS’s method, I couldn’t manage to replicate what they’ve done or even verify some of the starting assumptions.

The basic model is that projections of net migration and expectations of different fertility rates by ethnic group are rolled forward to create a forecast of what the population will look like in terms of ethnic composition. This is fine, although a model of this kind shouldn’t be treated as a prediction, per se.

What I got stuck on were the assumptions about future migration. Firstly, the report’s author(s) assume that for the next one hundred years, “all net migrants are assumed to originate from non-EU countries.”

Yes, this has been the case since 2021. More British people and more EU nationals have been leaving than arriving during that time and the only group who currently contribute to population growth are non-EU nationals. But this is a trend of four years. Will it last for forty years, or a hundred? Migration flows are highly reactive to policy changes, as evidenced by recent trends.

ONS, Long-term international migration, provisional: December 2024.

The second assumption I couldn’t verify was that:

“Based on the [England and Wales] Census 2021, approximately 13% of non-EU, non-British residents are classified as White (e.g. from North America, Oceania, or other non-EU European countries). Consequently, net migration is apportioned as 13% White and 87% non-White.”

The England and Wales Census didn’t capture nationality, so I don’t know how they’ve identified ‘EU’ and ‘non-EU.’ It could be that they used ‘country of birth’ or ‘national identity’, which the census did ask about. But in either case, when I run the numbers, I can’t get to 13% White:

England and Wales Census 2021: ‘national identity (detailed)’, ‘country of birth (detailed)’ and ‘ethnicity’. From the ONS’s custom table builder.

The longer view tells a different story

Looking at the ethnic profile of foreign-born people who were living in England and Wales in 2021, by their year of arrival, tells an interesting and more nuanced story of immigration. We can see that prior to 1960, immigration mainly consisted of White British people ‘returning’ from the colonies. In the 1970s, Asian became the largest category, and by the 2010s during the peak of EU migration it was White other.

England and Wales Census 2021: ‘ethnic group’ by ‘year of arrival’. From ONS custom table builder. Categories those used in the data source.

Crucially, this tells us about people who migrated to the UK and stayed long-term. Over half (51%) of people who arrived in the UK since 2011 and who were still living there in 2021 were White. The proportion was slightly lower, at 46% for all those who had arrived and stayed since 1951. Granted, the numbers since 2021 will definitely look quite different, at least at this point in time. But again, should really we assume that trend will continue for the next forty years?

Demographic change and British identity

It’s one thing to try and fact-check a sensational statistic about demographic change - but I feel a bit uncomfortable being in this space at all when it rings with angry accusations of who doesn’t belong. The CHSS report as a whole is about certain identities being seen as inferior or invasive to native Britishness. This includes people who are not “able to trace their roots in this country back more than one or two generations.” Tell that to King Charles, a second-generation migrant on his father’s side.

A lot of people will have seen the claim about White British becoming a minority though, and it will have tapped into unease about rapid change, so I think it bears investigating as a statistic.

If anyone has more information on how exactly the analysis was done, please send it my way.