Britain: An official handbook > 1966

Total
Population
BRITAIN: AN OFFICIAL HANDBOOK
birthplace and nationality, age and marital condition, housing tenure and
household arrangements and also reports on incidence of Welsh speaking
in Wales and Monmouthshire and on scientific and technological qualifications.
Further tables are expected on migration, dwellings and households, occupation
and industry, workplace, education and fertility.
Because the traditional ten-year interval is now too long to wait for the
firm figures needed by Government and business for decision making, which
only a census can give, censuses are to be taken throughout Great Britain
(on a sample basis) and Northern Ireland in 1966.
The short demographic account of the United Kingdom given in this
chapter is based mainly on census reports and on the regular returns of births,
marriages and deaths, though some use has been made of other special
investigations, including the Reports of the Royal Commission on Population.1
The enumerated population of the United Kingdom at the censuses taken
on 23rd April, 1961, was 52,709,000, excluding persons in the Isle of Man
and the Channel Islands, which are not strictly parts of the United
Kingdom.
The population had increased by nearly 2^ million since 1951, by about
6| million since 1931, by about 8J million since 1921 and by about 45 J million
—or about sevenfold—since 1700. The main causes of this increase were a
progressive reduction in death rates and a continuance of high birth rates
into the beginning of the twentieth century. Between June 1961 and June 1962
the population increased by 1 per cent, faster than at any time in the past 40
years, owing to natural increase and exceptionally high net gain from migration.
If a census had been taken in mid-1964 it is estimated that some 54,066,000
people would have been enumerated in the United Kingdom (adjusted for
members of the armed forces and others, 54,213,000). On the basis of present
trends it is now expected to go on growing, though probably by slightly under
the 1961-62 rate of increase.
The population density of the United Kingdom as a whole is one of the
highest in the world: it was approximately 554 persons per square mile at
the time of the 1961 censuses; but in England there were approximately
863 persons per square mile.
Deaths'
BIRTH RATES AND DEATH RATES
IN THE UNITED KINGDOM
(per 1,000 population)
Comparable rates not available owing to war«">“«
0 I 1876-80
1871-75 1881-85 1891-95 1901-05
1915 1920 1925 1930 1935 1940 1945 1950 1955 1.960 1964
1 This commission was appointed in i944j hs rnain report was published in 1949-