Usual resident population of England and Wales, by ethnic group, five-year age band and sex, at the 2011 and 2021 censuses. Shown as a share of each group or as counts.
Shaded band is ages 10 to 34. Census age bands are of unequal width: 10-15 covers six years and 16-19 covers four.
Source ONS Census 2011 table DC2101EW via nomis, and a Census 2021 custom dataset of region by age (18 bands) by sex by ethnic group (20 categories). Totals reconcile to 56,075,912 for 2011 and 59,597,521 for 2021.
Comparability The 2011 age bands nest exactly inside the 2021 ones, so no interpolation is used. Two ethnic categories are not fully comparable: Roma was a new tick box in 2021 and had no 2011 equivalent, and Other White and the black African and black other groups changed slightly in wording. 2021 counts carry small deliberate perturbations for disclosure control, which is negligible at this level of aggregation.