White British people will be a minority in 40 years, report claims

Telegraph

03-06-2025

White British people will become a minority in the UK population within the next 40 years, a report has predicted.
An analysis of migration, birth and death rates up to the end of the 21st century predicts that white British people will decline from their current position as 73 per cent of the population to 57 per cent by 2050 before slipping into a minority by 2063.
The research, by Prof Matt Goodwin, of Buckingham University, suggests that by the end of the century, the white British share of the population – defined as people who do not have an immigrant parent – could have fallen to around a third (33.7 per cent).
It projects a big rise in the proportion of the UK population comprising foreign-born and second-generation immigrants, from below 20 per cent to 33.5 per cent within the next 25 years.
By 2100, it predicts six in 10 people in the UK will either not have been born in the UK, or will have at least one immigrant parent.
The Muslim population, which currently stands at 7 per cent, is estimated to increase to more than one in 10 (11.2 per cent) within the next 25 years and account for one in five (19.2 per cent) of all people in the UK by the end of the century.
Prof Goodwin, an honorary professor at Kent University, said the research, based on Office for National Statistics (ONS) and census data, raised 'profound questions about the capacity of the UK state to both absorb and manage this scale of demographic change'.
In his report, he said the findings were certain to spark a 'considerable degree of anxiety, concern and political opposition' among many voters who favoured lowering immigration and slowing the pace of change in order to maintain 'the symbols, traditions, culture and ways of life of the traditional majority group'.
Prof Goodwin said: 'Their concerns will need to be recognised, respected and addressed if the UK is to avoid considerable political turbulence and polarisation in the years and decades ahead.'
His report follows a period of unprecedented legal and illegal migration – hitting a record high of 906,000 under the Tories in 2023 – and subsequent crackdowns including Labour's white paper this month proposing restrictions on the rights of migrants to live, work and study in the UK.
He said: 'By the end of the current century, most of the people on these islands will not be able to trace their roots in this country back more than one or two generations.
'By the year 2100, based on our projections, six in 10 people in the UK will not have been born in the UK or born to two UK-born parents.
'This raises enormous questions about the capacity of our country and leaders to unify people around a shared sense of identity, values, ways of life, and culture, and avoid the very real risk of us becoming what Sir Keir Starmer referred to, in May, as ' an island of strangers '.'
The research compared ethnic identity, comprising white British, other white groups such as Irish, Gipsy, Roma and other Europeans, and non-white; religious identity of non-Muslim versus Muslim and country of birth comparing UK born with foreign born.
It projected populations forward by applying age and sex-specific fertility, mortality and migration rates to a 2022 base population derived from the latest UK census data. These projections were calibrated to the 2022-based ONS national population projections.
Foreign-born and Muslim populations were estimated to have higher fertility rates.
So, while the UK-born fertility rate was 1.39, it was 1.97 for foreign-born people. For Muslims, it was 2.35, and for non-Muslims 1.54.
The research forecasts that white British share of the population will decline from 73 per cent to 44 per cent by the year 2075, and to 33.7 per cent by 2100.
The non-white share will increase from 19.7 per cent to 34.8 per cent by 2050, 48.1 per cent by the year 2075 and to 59.3 per cent by 2100.
The analysis suggested that the white population including both white British and white other would become a minority of the population in the year 2079.
The share of the UK population that is non-Muslim will gradually fall from 93 per cent in 2025 to 88.8 per cent in 2050, to 84.8 per cent by 2075 and then to 80.8 per cent by the year 2100, according to the research.
The analysis suggested that the share of the population that is UK-born will fall from 81 per cent to 39 per cent between 2025 and 2100, while the share of the population comprising people born overseas will increase from just above 18 per cent to almost 26 per cent over the same period.
When the foreign-born population is combined with their children, the proportion of the projected foreign-born and second-generation population will rise to 33.5 per cent of the overall UK population in 2050, 47.5 per cent by 2075 and 60.6 per cent by 2100, according to the analysis.
The report said: 'In other words, by the end of the current century, by the year 2100, based on current trends around six in 10 people in the UK will not have been born in the UK or born to UK-born parents.'
Migration is changing Britain beyond all recognition
By Matt Goodwin
The White British will become a minority group in the UK by the year 2063. The foreign-born and their immediate descendants will become a majority by 2079. And by the end of this century, roughly one in five people will follow the Islamic faith, up from roughly one in 14 today.
These are the findings from my latest research report, which builds on Office for National Statistics data to project how the UK population could evolve in the decades ahead.
Population projections are notoriously difficult, but using something called the 'cohort-component method', a standard approach in the study of demography, we can project the changes in the UK's population between today and 2100, picking out trends in race and ethnicity, country of birth and religious identity.
Our research suggests that unless there is a radical change of policy, the share of the UK population that is white British will fall sharply from just over 70 per cent today to below 34 per cent by the year 2100.
They will be a minority in the country in 2063, just 38 years from now. Among the under-40s, the tipping point will come much sooner, in 2050.
A child born today, in other words, will be living in what is close to becoming a white British minority country by the time they turn 25.
We will also witness profound changes in where people were born. A population where most people can trace their roots on these islands back over multiple generations will make way for one in which a majority were born overseas, or born to at least one parent who were born overseas.
The ties to our nation – to its sense of history, culture, ways of life and collective memory – will become much weaker.
Between the early 2020s and the end of this century, the share of the UK population comprised of people who were born in the country and who are not the direct offspring of immigrants will collapse from 81 to 39 per cent, according to our research, while the share who are foreign-born or the immediate descendants of the foreign-born will rocket from 33 to 61 per cent.
By the end of this century, around six in 10 people in this country will either not have been born in this country or will be the direct descendants of recent immigrants to the country, we found.
The foreign-born and their offspring will become a majority in England in 2079, in Wales in 2081, in Scotland in 2093, and in Northern Ireland sometime after 2122, our analysis suggests.
And again, this will happen much sooner among the under-40s, with the foreign-born and their descendants becoming a majority among the young in England as early as 2062.
Our projections also reveal how the religious identity of the country will be transformed, with the Muslim population surging three-fold from 7 per cent today to over 15 per cent by 2075, and to nearly 20 per cent by 2100.
Under a 'high Muslim migration scenario', whereby the UK receives higher than average in-flows from Muslim states, we estimate that one in four British people will be Muslim by the year 2100, rising to nearly one in three of the under-40s in this country.
As you'll have noticed, all these demographic projections are more pronounced among the under-40s.
Among young people, by the year 2100, whites will only comprise 28 per cent of the population of England while the UK-born who are not the immediate descendants of immigrants will represent just 28 per cent of the English population, a little over one in every four young people.
At the end of the century, again among young people, some 68 per cent will be non-White, roughly one in four will be Muslim, and a large majority will have been born to at least one parent who was themselves not born in the UK.
Precisely because of the policy of mass immigration, under both the Labour and Tory parties, and which was then turbocharged by the so-called post-2019 ' Boriswave ', the UK is on course to experience huge and historically unprecedented changes in the composition of its population.
By the year 2100, and again unless things change, our immediate descendants will be living in a country in which the White British will only comprise one third of the population, people with long and strong roots in this country will only represent around four in every 10 people, down from eight in 10 today, while somewhere between one fifth and one third of all people will follow the Islamic faith.
Lastly, it's worth pointing out that while population projections are complex and should be treated with caution, for the last quarter-century the story with these projections has been one of projections and forecasts underestimating, rather than overestimating, the scale and pace of change.
What we can say today, with some certainty, is that these islands are about to experience a dramatic population transformation that will not only be unprecedented in history but will also test the state and the social contract like never before.
It is high time our political leaders look beyond the short term to try and think just as seriously about the longer-term consequences of their policies.
Prof Matt Goodwin is senior visiting fellow at the University of Buckingham and writes at mattgoodwin.org