The UK population is ethnically diverse and is changing rapidly, especially in large cities
such as London, so it is not always easy to get an exact picture of the ethnic origin of all
the population from census statistics. Each of the four countries of the UK (England,
Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland) has different customs, attitudes and histories.

People of Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Black Caribbean, Black African, Bangladeshi and
mixed ethnic descent make up 8.3% of the UK population. Today about half of the
members of these communities were born in the United Kingdom.

There are also considerable numbers of people resident in the UK who are of Irish,
Italian, Greek and Turkish Cypriot, Polish, Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and
American descent. Large numbers have also arrived since 2004 from the new East
European members states of the European Union. These groups are not identified
separately in the census statistics in the following table.

UK Population 2001
	Million	UK Population %
White (including people of European, Australian, American descent)	54.2	92
Mixed	0.7	1.2
Asian or Asian British
Indian	1.1	1.8
Pakistani	0.7	1.3
Bangladeshi	0.3	0.5
Other Asian	0.2	0.4
Black or Black British
Black Caribbean	0.6	1.0
Black African	0.5	0.8
Black other	0.1	0.2
Chinese	0.2	0.4
Other	0.2	0.4

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