The population of Great Britain by preliminaryForecasts of experts by 2025 will reach 25 million people. Despite active emigration from developing countries, which occurred in 1981-2001, the population growth during this time was only 6%. The UK has one of the highest population densities in the world, which is 242 people per square kilometer.
UK fertility rateis 1.3%, and mortality - 10.3%. The average life expectancy of men in the UK is about 75 years, women - about 81 years. In 2000, the number of women in the UK exceeded the male population by 838,000.
According to experts, the population of Great Britainhas a serious problem - aging. So, in 2002, people over the age of 65 accounted for almost 16% of the total number of inhabitants of the country. According to the same census conducted in 2001, it was found that the number of people over 60 years old exceeds the number of children under the age of 15 years.
Great Britain has a very high degreeurbanization of the population. At the end of the 20th century, the population of Great Britain, living in cities, accounted for about 90% of the total number of inhabitants. The largest cities are London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Leeds, Sheffield and others. Also, according to statistics, about half of all UK residents live in cities with a population exceeding 100,000 people.
Great Britain, whose population is verymultinational, in the second half of XX century adopted a large flow of emigrants from India, Pakistan, the Caribbean, and later from African states: Uganda, Kenya, Malawi. The natives of these countries account for about 7% of the total population of Great Britain. As for the indigenous people, most of them are English (about 81%). Other indigenous peoples living in the UK are Scots (about 9%), Irish (about 2%) and Welsh (slightly less than 2%).
The population of Great Britain speaks Englishlanguage. In addition, part of the population of Wales owns the Welsh language, part of the inhabitants of Scotland - Gaelic, and the population of the Channel Islands - French.
As for the religious sphere, the United Kingdomfor the most part is a Protestant country. The Anglican Church, which has the status of a state in England, has about 34 million followers. In Scotland, the Presbyterian Church plays the most important role, which is followed by 800 thousand people. Also in the country there are about 6 million Catholics. In addition, there are quite numerous groups of devotees of Methodism, Baptism, Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism. The number of adherents of Islam increases rapidly, the number of which in 2002 was 1.5 million people.
The political structure of Great Britainassumes the right to vote for every citizen of the state and other countries that are members of the Commonwealth, as well as Northern Ireland, regardless of national origin.
