Why is london population

Low fertility rates, for instance, generally result in a low overall dependency ratio the number of old and young people supported by the working population.

For England as whole this ratio reached its lowest point in the s. Because a high number of London's inhabitants were relatively young recent migrants over the age of 14, the effect would be even more powerfully felt in the capital. In other words, London in the late seventeenth century was not a city of children or the elderly.

Instead, it was dominated by young men and women in their teens and twenties. During the seventeenth century migration tended to be long distance and international. As a result, besides its youth, London's population in this period was also characterised by its diversity.

All the regions and countries that made up the British Isles were well represented by self-conscious communities of migrants. Specific neighbourhoods were associated with Yorkshire, Scotland and Ireland. At the same time the Huguenot refugees from France successfully carved out a distinct district for themselves in Spitalfields; while Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazim from Poland and Germany settled around Whitechapel and Petticoat Lane.

By the population of London had reached around ,; rising to approximately , by Population growth in this period was not, however, evenly spread.

Steady growth up to around was followed by a period of relative stagnation to mid-century, followed in turn by stronger growth during the s. Poor hygiene, living conditions and the "gin craze" are frequently cited as explanations for the high mortality rate, and demographers have in particular pointed to the extremely high rate among infants Changing attitudes towards child mortality in this period are reflected in both the establishment of institutions such as the Foundling Hospital in ; and in the Proceedings themselves, by the decline in prosecutions for infanticide noticeable from the s onwards, as efforts shifted towards supporting single mothers rather than shaming them.

The stagnation or very slow growth of the population of London in this period was also reflected by a marked depression in the building industries. From approximately three-quarters of a million people in , London continued a strong pattern of growth through the last four decades of the eighteenth century. In , when the first reliable modern census was taken, greater London recorded 1,, souls; rising to a little over 1.

No single decade in this period witnessed less than robust population growth. In part this urban bloat resulted from a marked decline in infant mortality brought about by better hygiene and childrearing practices, and a changing disease pattern. By the s children born in the capital were three times less likely to die in childhood than those born in the s. But much more important than mortality was increased migration and rising fertility.

Long distance migration within the Britain Isles declined with the exception of migration from Ireland , and was replaced by a higher level of regional migration, with London attracting large numbers from the home counties and from communities with strong links to London through coastal shipping. These are the young families moving out of the capital, very often in search of homes for less than London's notoriously high prices.

Yet this does not mean that they are giving up on London altogether and returning "home" to the other parts of the country they first moved from. Unlike people moving for university, many stay within commuting distance. Two-thirds of these age groups remain in what might be called "the Greater South East" - an area stretching from Southampton up to Milton Keynes and across to Norfolk. So while they no longer live in the city, they still have the option to work there. And the , people who commute into London each day - more than the entire population of cities such as Leeds and Bristol - suggest that many of them do.

Among those Londoners who remain past their 30s more continue to leave than arrive, albeit in smaller numbers. These flows of people - the arrival of large numbers of young people and the departure of many of those who are older - also explains why London is such a young city.

With an average age of 37, its population is the sixth youngest of any large town or city in the UK. Oxford, Cambridge and Coventry all have populations with an average age under 36, while in Swansea and Sunderland, the oldest, it is London's experience differs to other big British cities.

Places like Liverpool, Sheffield, Newcastle and Nottingham have also seen their population and economies grow.

But the waves of people arriving and leaving are very different. They see two waves of people leaving - one for those aged many of whom head to London and a second for people aged over The inflow and first wave of out-migration is related to universities.

These cities have a number of universities in them and attract many thousands of students from across the country, including London. Like international in migration, the level of international out migration fluctuates but remains within a relatively small range - over the last decade an average of thousand people left London annually for locations outside the UK.

In there were thousand international out-migrants from London. The GLA estimate has a lower international outflow and a higher international inflow than the ONS MYE, however the differences in the gross flows cancel each other and net international migration is similar in both estimates - they differ by just 18 thousand.

Domestic migration is the movement of people within the UK. Net domestic migration shows the balance between those coming into London from elsewhere in the UK and those leaving London for somewhere else in the UK. As noted above, there is a strong relationship between international in migration and domestic out migration.

The axis on the chart is negative meaning that more people leave London than enter. In recent years the level of net domestic migration has been at very high levels. In , thousand more people left London than settled here. How London became the center of the world Three decades of growth reinvented the urban landscape in London—and transformed it into the preeminent global city. Reigning over London, the Shard is its tallest building, dwarfing earlier icons such as Tower Bridge.

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