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Summaries of NEMDA 1991 Census Statistical Papers

Each of the ten Statistical Papers contains a summary of the key findings. These are avilable below, or you can view all ten in an Adobe Acrobat document.

1: Ethnic Minorities in Great Britain: Settlement Patterns
2: Ethnic Minorities in Great Britain: Age and gender structure
3: Ethnic Minorities in Great Britain:Economic circumstances
4: Ethnic Minorities in Great Britain: Housing and Family characteristics
5: Country of birth: Settlement Patterns
6: Black people in Great Britain: Social and economic circumstances
7: South Asian people in Great Britain: Social and economic circumstances
8: "Chinese and Other" people in Great Britain: Social and economic circumstances
9: Irish-born people in Great Britain: Social and economic circumstances
10: Ethnic Minorities in Great Britain: Patterns of population change, 1981-91

Summary and conclusions for NEMDA 1991 Census Statistical Paper 1: Ethnic Minorities in Great Britain: Settlement Patterns

This report has provided a preliminary analysis of the location of the ethnic minority population of Great Britain in 1991. Though only district total population data is available, it is possible to identify a number of features;

There are now 3 million people from ethnic minority groups living in Great Britain;
This section of the population tends to be concentrated in the most urbanised parts of Britain;
However, people from ethnic minorities live in all parts of the country;
The bulk of the ethnic minority population lives in Greater London and the West Midlands;
The highest relative concentrations of people from ethnic minorities are found in London;
Indians are the single largest ethnic minority group;
"Blacks" tend to be most concentrated in the larger cities;
"Chinese and others" have the most dispersed pattern of settlement;
Ethnic minorities are least well represented in the higher status growing areas and the more rural parts of Britain;
There is a tendency towards increasing concentration of the ethnic minority population in the larger urban settlements of Britain.

As the full range of data from the Census becomes available, it will be possible to study a wider range of socio-economic phenomena affecting ethnic minorities and to study location patterns in greater spatial detail. These analyses will be presented in subsequent reports in this series.

Summary and conclusions for NEMDA 1991 Census Statistical Paper 2: Ethnic Minorities in Great Britain: Age and gender structure

This paper has briefly summarised the key features of the age and gender composition of the ten broad ethnic groups identified by the British Census. A number of notable results have been highlighted;

The ethnic minority population of Great Britain continued to grow between 1981 and 1991, but there were considerable variations in rates of growth between the individual ethnic groups. The Pakistani, Bangladeshi and "Other" groups increased fastest, the number of white people grew very slowly, and the number of West Indians declined;
Net in-migration to the UK strongly influenced the growth of the most rapidly increasing population groups of South Asian and African ethnic origin, though an increasing proportion of the population of ethnic minorities has been born in the UK;
There are considerable variations in gender composition between ethnic groups. For Whites, Black-Caribbeans, Black-Others, Chinese and Other Asians, females are in the majority. Amongst the South Asian groups and Black-Africans, males outnumber females;
Over the period 1981-91, the excess of males over females amongst ethnic minorities has fallen;
The white population is considerably older on average than the populations of the various ethnic minority groups;
The share of ethnic minorities in the population declines with age;
There are considerable variations in age structure between ethnic minority groups. Black-Caribbeans, Chinese, Indians and Other Asians tend to be oldest while Black-Others, Other-Others, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis are youngest;
The youngest ethnic minority group, Black-Others, has the largest percentage of its population born in the UK. Half the population of this ethnic group is of school age or less;
46.8 per cent of all persons from minority ethnic groups were born in the UK.
Comparison with the population of households headed by a person born in the New Commonwealth shows that this 1981 Census-style definition now seriously underestimates the size of the ethnic minority population of Britain;
Ethnic minority groups have lower dependency ratios on average than the white population;
Dependency ratios are largely determined by the size of the child population, thus they are low for Chinese, Other Asians and Black-Caribbeans, but high for Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Black-Others;
Black-Caribbeans are the only ethnic minority group with a sizeable number of people of pensionable age;
The shape of population pyramids points to further rapid growth in the number of Black-Others, Pakistanis and Bangladeshis;
The median age of ethnic minorities is higher in the South East than in the northern conurbations, probably reflecting the location patterns of relatively older and younger ethnic minorities.

The 1980s saw continued growth in the ethnic minority population of Great Britain, with the most rapidly growing ethnic groups having very youthful population structures. It is likely that these groups will continue to grow during the 1990s, and this growth may be spatially concentrated. Further analysis of the patterns identified in this introductory national analysis at the local scale will be possible using the detailed Local Base Statistics from the 1991 Census of Population.

Summary and conclusions for NEMDA 1991 Census Statistical Paper 3: Ethnic Minorities in Great Britain: Economic circumstances

This Statistical Paper has illustrated the clear differences in labour market outcomes which exist between ethnic groups in Great Britain. It has demonstrated that the three broad ethnic groupings have very different circumstances, but has further shown that even the disaggregation of ethnic minorities as a whole into these three categories disguises very great variation between the nine individual ethnic minority groups. The key findings may therefore be summarised as;

White people have economic activity rates around ten percentage points higher than people from ethnic minorities as a whole;
There are substantial differentials in economic activity rates between ethnic minorities. Black-Caribbean people display similar rates to white people, but those for Asian groups are much lower. Pakistani and Bangladeshi women display very low participation rates;
Part-time employment is more typical of white women than ethnic minority women;
Self-employment is more significant for ethnic minorities than for white people. However, Chinese and South Asians are far more likely to be self-employed than Black people;
The Chinese are also more likely than any other ethnic group to be self-employed with employees. Black people are far less likely to be business on their own account than other ethnic groups;
Unemployment rates are higher for both men and women amongst ethnic minorities than for white people. Bangladeshis have the highest unemployment rates, followed by Black ethnic groups and Pakistanis, while the Chinese experience rates most similar to those for white people;
Young people from ethnic minorities are more likely to stay in education than young white people. Black-Caribbeans are most likely to join the labour market while Chinese are most likely to be students;
Unemployment rates are higher for 16-24 year olds than for the entire working population.
The Black and Pakistani ethnic groups suffer the highest unemployment rates;
The national pattern of unemployment rates by ethnic group is fairly constant across all parts of Britain. Unemployment rates are highest in the areas of highest overall unemployment, in the more urbanised parts of Britain, notably the metropolitan counties of northern England;
However, high unemployment rates for ethnic minorities are also found in smaller and more remote places.

Though the 1991 Census provides the first definitive information on the economic circumstances of ethnic minorities, the standard output from the Census still fails to answer key questions about their experience in the labour market. Prominent amongst these are the role of industrial and occupational segregation in determining ethnic group differences in achievement in the labour market and differences in incomes between ethnic groups. Other data sets produced from the Census (such as the Sample of Anonymised Records) and other surveys (e.g. the Labour Force Survey) will be used in further investigation of these questions.

Summary and conclusions for NEMDA 1991 Census Statistical Paper 4: Ethnic Minorities in Great Britain: Housing and family characteristics

This Statistical Paper has reviewed the information available on household types and housing conditions for ethnic groups for Great Britain as a whole. Marked differences have been revealed between ethnic groups in household size and organisation, housing tenure and levels of relative housing deprivation. The key findings may therefore be summarised as;

Larger households are more common among South Asians than in the white or Black ethnic groups;
Pakistanis and Bangladeshis have the largest households;
The nuclear family is by no means the most common type of household organisation. Amongst white and Black households, families with dependent children are a minority household type;
Families with children are most common among South Asian ethnic groups. Single-person households and childless couples are relatively uncommon for these ethnic groups;
Black groups stand out as having high proportions of single-adult households, one-parent families and households with adult members of the same gender and dependent children;
Pensioner households are far less common among ethnic minorities than in the white population;
Black households rely on the public sector and other rented tenures for accommodation to a greater extent than South Asians, who display a high rate of home ownership;
South Asians, especially Bangladeshis, experience relatively high levels of overcrowding in their accommodation;
South Asian households experience relatively high rates of lack of housing amenities;
Black ethnic groups, Bangladeshis and Pakistanis have low rates of car ownership, while Indians have higher rates of car ownership than the population as a whole;
Black-Caribbeans and South Asian ethnic groups tend to experience poorer levels of health than other ethnic minorities, as measured by the percentage of households containing persons suffering from limiting long-term illnesses.

The patterns of social organisation and economic disadvantage implied by the results presented here show quite different experiences between ethnic groups. Black groups experience similar trends in household evolution to the white population, with small household sizes and more single-person and pensioner households, but also have a higher incidence of one-parent families than other ethnic minorities, are relatively dependent upon public sector housing and have low levels of car ownership. Family structures are stronger in South Asian groups and household sizes larger. While South Asians are more likely to own their own houses thn other minority ethnic groups, Indians seem to have achieved greater material success in terms of car ownership and living conditions than Pakistanis and Bangladeshis.

Summary and conclusions for NEMDA 1991 Census Statistical Paper 5: Country of birth: Settlement Patterns

This Statistical Paper has outlined the geographical origins of the population of Great Britain, and illustrated some of the information which can be derived from the Census data on country of birth. It has demonstrated that though country of birth data was used as an indicator of ethnic group following previous Censuses, it is no longer an accurate indicator of the magnitude of minority ethnic groups, underlining the need for the inclusion of an ethnic group question in the 1991 Census. Some of the key findings of this paper are;

In April 1991, there were nearly 4 million people (7.3 per cent of the total population) resident in Great Britain who had been born elsewhere in the world (including Ireland [North and South]);
3.1 per cent of the British population in 1991 had been born in the New Commonwealth, half of these coming from the Indian subcontinent;
The number of people born outside Great Britain increased by 10.8 per cent between 1981 and 1991, while the number of people born in Britain grew by 1.9 per cent;
Country of birth has been shown here not to be a good indicator of ethnic group. For example, 15 per cent of persons born in the New Commonwealth are white, while only 82 per cent of those born in the Indian sub-continent were from South Asian ethnic groups;
Overall, 60.6 per cent of all those born outside Great Britain in 1991 were white people;
The main countries of origin of those born outside Great Britain are the Irish Republic, India, Northern Ireland, Pakistan and Germany;
There was a geographical shift in the origins of the population during the decade, with a decline in the number of people born in Ireland, eastern Europe and the Caribbean and rapid growth in the numbers born in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Germany, the United States, parts of Africa and Turkey;
There is a marked "north-south divide" in the location of the non-British born, with a far larger percentage of the population born outside Great Britain in the south-eastern corner of Britain than elsewhere;
Half or more of all persons born in the ten geographical regions of the world outside Great Britain identified in this paper live in the South-East standard region;
More than a fifth of the population of Greater London and about ten per cent of the population of the West Midlands metropolitan county was born outside Britain;
Kensington & Chelsea is the local authority district in which the share of the resident population born outside Great Britain is highest, at 37.9 per cent;
People born in Ireland and in the Indian sub-continent are more likely to live in the midlands and northern England than other non-British born people. This reflects the location of people from South Asian ethnic groups in the conurbations of the midlands and northern England;
This paper has shown how country of birth data can be used to identify the geographical location of smaller 'national' minority groups not included in the ethnic group tables;
Turks and Cypriots are heavily concentrated into a few London Boroughs, while the majority of Vietnamese are found in Birmingham, Manchester and Inner London;
The population in households headed by a person born in Bangladesh grew by nearly 150 per cent between 1981 and 1991, while the population in households with Irish- and Caribbean-born heads contracted by a fifth;
Households with heads born in Bangladesh and Pakistan are much larger than those with heads born elsewhere, confirming the results obtained from analysis of the ethnic group data from the Census;
Mean household size declined overall between 1981 and 1991, especially for the Irish- and Caribbean-born, but the size of Bangladeshi households increased over the decade.

Summary and conclusions for NEMDA 1991 Census Statistical Paper 6: Black people in Great Britain: Social and economic circumstances

This Statistical Paper has extended the analyses of the socio-economic circumstances of people from Black ethnic groups presented in earlier papers in the series by looking at a number of topics in greater detail and covering a range of additional aspects of their experience. A number of findings may be highlighted;

There were nearly 900 thousand people in the three Black ethnic groups in April 1991, representing 1.6 per cent of the British population;
Black people tend to be younger on average than white people, though Black-Caribbean people are older than Black-African people;
Half of all people in the Black-Other ethnic group are aged under 15, and the great majority were born in the UK;
Most Black people live in the larger urban areas of Britain;
Black-African people have the most concentrated spatial distribution, mostly living in the London area, together with port cities and Manchester;
Black-Caribbean people mainly live in Greater London together with the West Midlands conurbation. There are lesser concentrations of this ethnic group in Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, East Midlands cities and parts of the outer South-East;
The percentage of Black people in the population tends to be highest in London Boroughs, but Black-Caribbeans have a significant presence in some parliamentary constituencies in Birmingham;
Black households tend to be similar in size to white households, with Black-African households slightly larger on average;
A much higher percentage of Black than white households live in rented accommodation. Black-Caribbeans are most likely to live in public sector property while Black-Africans are most likely to rent from the private sector;
Black-Africans thus suffer poorer physical housing conditions than white people or other Black ethnic groups, with a greater degree of overcrowding and a higher incidence of shared bathrooms and WCs;
A much higher percentage of Black than white families are headed by a lone parent. Cohabiting is also a more common form of family organisation than among white people;
A smaller percentage of Black than white people suffer limiting long-term illnesses;
However, when illness rates are standardised to take age structure into account, Black ethnic groups emerge as having poorer levels of health than white people;
Black-Caribbean and Black-Other people have similar patterns of economic activity rates by age to white people, but Black-Africans have lower activity rates;
Part-time working is less common for Black women than white women, and the percentage of entrepreneurs is smaller for Black people than white people;
Black-Caribbean people tend to work in similar industries to white people, but overall Black people are more strongly represented in services than in manufacturing;
A higher percentage of Black than white people work in lower level service jobs, though many Black-Africans work in professional occupations;
Black people have higher unemployment rates than white people, across all age groups;
The percentage of Black-African people with further and higher education qualifications is much higher than for white and other Black people;
However, highly-qualified Black-African people tend to fare relatively badly in the labour market.

Summary and conclusions for NEMDA 1991 Census Statistical Paper 7: South Asian people in Great Britain: Social and economic circumstances

This Statistical Paper has presented a range of new information on the demographic, health, housing and economic circumstances of people from South Asian ethnic groups. The key findings are;

There were nearly 1.5 million people in the three South Asian ethnic groups in April 1991, representing 2.7 per cent of the British population;
South Asian people are younger on average than white people. People in the Indian ethnic group are older on average than Pakistanis and Bangladeshi people;
The median age of Bangladeshi people is around 17 years;
Half of all Pakistani people and a third of all Bangladeshi people were born in the UK;
Indian people are more widespread within Britain than other South Asians, but still mainly located in the South-East, midlands and "Pennine" regions;
Pakistani people have a greater concentration in the midlands and northern England;
Bangladeshi people are highly concentrated geographically, with Inner London and Birmingham containing the majority of people from this ethnic group;
South Asians form a very high percentage of some parliamentary constituencies in Birmingham, parts of London and provincial cities like Leicester and Bradford. In these areas, South Asian children also represent a large proportion of the school-age population of some Local Education Authorities;
South Asian households are much larger on average than white households, on average. Bangladeshi-headed households contain 5.3 people, compared to an average of 2.4 people in white-headed households;
Indian and Pakistani households are more likely than white households to own their own homes. Bangladeshi people are more likely to live in rented accommodation than white people, and are more likely than the other South Asian ethnic groups to live in public-sector accommodation;
Bangladeshis suffer poorer physical housing conditions than white people or other South Asian ethnic groups, with a greater degree of overcrowding and a higher incidence of shared bathrooms and WCs. In contrast, Indian households display a higher level of car ownership than white households;
The percentage of families headed by a lone parent is similar for the white, Pakistani and Bangladeshi ethnic groups, but slightly smaller for Indian people. Amongst married couples, a much higher percentage of South Asian than white families have dependent children;
When age structure is taken into account, South Asian ethnic groups emerge as having poorer levels of health than white people. Pakistani and Bangladeshi people suffer higher relative illness rates than Indian people;
South Asian people have lower economic activity rates than white people. The activity rates of Indian people are most similar to white people, while Bangladeshis have the lowest rates of participation in the labour market;
Part-time working is less common for South Asian women than white women;
South Asians are more likely than white people to be business people;
A higher percentage of Indian and Pakistani than white people work in manufacturing industry, especially textiles & clothing, while Bangladeshis mainly work in distribution;
South Asian people are less likely than white people to have managerial, white-collar or skilled manual jobs, but are more likely to be proprietors, doctors or semi-skilled workers;
South Asian people have higher unemployment rates than white people, across all age groups, industries and occupations;
The percentage of people with further and higher education qualifications is higher than white people for Indian people but lower for Pakistanis and Bangladeshis;
Amongst the highly-qualified, unemployment rates for South Asians are well above that for white people.

Summary and conclusions for NEMDA 1991 Census Statistical Paper 8: Chinese people and "Other" ethnic minorities in Great Britain: Social and economic circumstances

The analyses presented in this Statistical Paper contain a considerable amount of detail on the socio-economic characteristics of people from the highly diverse "Chinese & Other" ethnic groups. To summarise the findings of the report, a number of key findings may be highlighted;

The three "Chinese & Other" ethnic groups contained 644.7 thousand people in April 1991, representing 1.2 per cent of the British population;
The national origins of people from these ethnic groups is very diverse. The Other-Other ethnic group contains people with ethnic origins from a wide range of south-east Asian countries, while the Other-Other group contains both people from north African and Middle Eastern countries and people with parents from different ethnic groups;
The age distribution of these ethnic groups is very different from other minority ethnic groups, with the majority of Chinese and Other-Asian people being of prime working age;
While the bulk of the Chinese and Other-Asian ethnic groups were born outside the UK, the great majority of all people in the Other-Other ethnic group were born in the UK and half are aged under 15;
London contains the majority of people from the "Chinese & Other" ethnic groups, but Chinese people have a more widespread distribution, with substantial concentrations in Liverpool, Manchester, Newcastle, and the larger Scottish and Welsh cities;
The percentage of people from "Chinese & Other" ethnic groups is highest in London Boroughs and LEAs, but the parliamentary constituency with the highest percentage of Chinese people is in Liverpool;
Married couples are more common for Chinese and Other-Asian people than for white people, and Other-Asian married couples are more likely than the white ethnic group to have dependent children;
People from "Chinese & Other" ethnic groups are less likely than white people to own their own houses and are more likely to live in private-rented accommodation;
Lone parent families are more common in the Other-Other ethnic group than for white, Chinese or Other-Asian ethnic groups;
Rates of limiting long-term illness are lower for people in "Chinese & Other" ethnic groups than for white people;
When age structure is taken into account, Chinese and Other-Asian ethnic groups emerge as being substantially more healthy than white people, but the Other-Other ethnic group is less healthy than the white ethnic group;
The "Chinese & Other" ethnic groups have lower economic activity rates than white people, because they tend to enter the labour market at a later age;
People from the "Chinese & Other" ethnic groups have longer working weeks on average than white people, with Chinese people working the longest hours of all;
"Chinese & Other" people tend to work in similar industries to white people, but overall "Chinese & Other" people are more strongly represented in services than in manufacturing;
Most Chinese people work in the distribution sector (which includes retailing and catering);
Chinese people experience unemployment rates similar to white people, across all age groups, while Other-Other people have much higher unemployment rates than white people;
People from the "Chinese & Other" ethnic groups are more likely to stay in full-time education after the age of 16 than white people, and stay in full-time education for longer than white people;
Consequently, the percentage of "Chinese & Other" people with further and higher education qualifications is much higher than for white people;
However, highly-qualified "Chinese & Other" people are less likely to participate in the labour market than white people, and suffer much higher unemployment rates.

Summary and conclusions for NEMDA 1991 Census Statistical Paper 9: Irish-born people in Great Britain: Settlement patterns and socio-economic circumstances

This Statistical Paper has presented a comprehensive picture of the social and economic experience of Irish-born people living in Britain. The availability of the Samples of Anonymised Records has enabled the very important differences which exist between people born in Northern Ireland and those born in the Republic to be revealed. Overall, Northern Ireland people are closer to the average for all white people than are the Irish Republic-born, across a range of indicators. A number of key findings may be highlighted;

The Irish-born population of great Britain is now declining, after having increased substantially in the early post-war decades;
Irish-born people are distinctive in being much older on average than the rest of the population;
Republic-born people have an even older age distribution than people born in Northern Ireland;
Half of all people born in the Irish Republic live in South-East England and over a third in Greater London, the other main foci for settlement being Birmingham and Manchester;
The geographical distribution of the Northern Ireland-born is very different. They are more widespread within Britain and are particularly well-represented in Scotland. Some of their largest local concentrations occur in rural parts of Scotland;
The main local concentrations of Irish Republic-born people occur in London. They are most prominent in parliamentary constituencies in north and west London (forming 11.2 per cent of the population of Brent East), together with parts of Birmingham and Manchester;
A higher percentage of households with Irish-born heads live in public sector rented property than either all white-headed or minority ethnic group-headed households;
The percentage of Irish-headed households lacking housing amenities or not owning a car is well above the average for all white people;
The structure of Irish-headed families is similar to the white average, but divorce is much more common than the average for white people as a whole;
Lone parent families are thus more common for Irish-headed households than all white households, but these are likely to have older heads without dependent children;
The percentage of Irish-born people with limiting long-term illnesses is well above the average for all white people;
However, if their age structure of Irish people is taken into account, they are found to have better levels of health than minority ethnic groups;
Irish-born people have very high rates of participation in the labour market, especially for young people;
Irish-born people are more likely to be self-employed than white people as a whole;
Northern Ireland-born and Irish Republic-born men tend to work in very different industries. The former mainly work in the service sector, while nearly a third of Republic-born men work in the construction industry;
People born in Northern Ireland are more likely to work in white-collar jobs than those born in the Republic, for whom less skilled jobs account for a larger share of employment. Nursing jobs are an important source of employment for women from both parts of Ireland;
Unemployment rates for Irish Republic-born men are almost as high as those for minority ethnic groups, while those for the Northern Ireland-born are close to the overall white unemployment rate;
Irish-born young people are less likely to be in full-time education than white people as a whole or minority ethnic groups;
A large percentage of the Irish-born are highly qualified. This percentage is even larger for the Northern Ireland-born than the Republic-born;
The highly qualified Northern Ireland-born fare even better in the labour market than white people as a whole, but the Republic-born do less well.

Summary and conclusions for NEMDA 1991 Census Statistical Paper 10: Ethnic Minorities in Great Britain: Patterns of population change, 1981-91

This Statistical Paper has presented an overview of the patterns of population change by ethnic group which occurred during the 1980s, within the context of longer-term change in the ethnic mix of the population of Great Britain. Despite the uncertainties involved in the use of data from the Censuses of Population before 1991, a number of conclusions can be drawn;
The minority ethnic group population of Great Britain grew by over a quarter between 1981 and 1991;
The white ethnic group grew very slowly over the same period;
Minority ethnic groups were responsible for the bulk of the increase in the British population between 1981 and 1991;
The Census and Labour Force Survey broadly agree on which ethnic groups were growing most and least rapidly;
The most rapid increases were experienced by the Bangladeshis, African and Chinese ethnic groups;
The Pakistani ethnic group grew in numbers more than any other;
The Indian ethnic group grew at a slow rate, but because of its size, this still involved a very large number of people;
The greatest uncertainty surrounds change in the West Indian or Black-Caribbean ethnic group. It is certain that the numbers born in the Caribbean continued their decline during the 1980s (probably due to return migration as well as deaths), but the growth of the British-born population is difficult to estimate;
The number of people with parents from different ethnic groups (the "mixed" ethnic group) increased at a rapid rate;
The "Other" ethnic group also increased rapidly, partly due to the emergence of new ethnic identities, but also as a result of the migration of new ethnic groups to Great Britain, such as the Japanese;
The influence of international migration on population change in Great Britain was declining from the early 1960s up to the early 1980s, but since then there has again been a net inflow of people;
International migration has been the major contributing factor to the growth of the Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Chinese, African and Other ethnic groups between 1981 and 1991;
In contrast, the growth of the Indian and Mixed ethnic groups was mainly a consequence of births in the UK;
The fertility levels of most ethnic groups were declining through the 1980s, but those of the African, Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Chinese ethnic groups fell most slowly;
The West Indian and Indian ethnic groups experienced the lowest fertility rates of any minority ethnic groups;
Death rates for minority ethnic groups rose steadily throughout the 1980s, as a consequence of the increasing number of older people in their populations;
The lack of an ethnic group question before 1991 means that it is necessary to make estimates of rates of change in the populations of individual ethnic groups. Unfortunately, the greater the percentage of household heads born in the UK, the less robust these estimates become;
The most reliable estimates presented in this paper are those for the Bangladeshi ethnic group, which highlight the substantial increase of this ethnic group in Inner London, Birmingham and Manchester;
The greatest degree of uncertainty surrounds the local estimates of population change for the Caribbean and Indian ethnic groups, since there is little information upon which to base estimates of the UK-born components of their populations.

These conclusions emphasise the need for the ethnic group question to be retained in the 2001 Census, in order that the changing size and distribution of ethnic groups can be accurately measured.