Is England the most crowded country in Europe?
Posted by 5cc
August 28th, 2010
For a few years now, the Mail has been telling us that England is the most crowded country in Europe. Thursday’s edition included the latest version of this, in ‘This very crowded isle: England is most over-populated country in EU‘. But is it?
This story is based on figures provided by the House of Commons Library, taken from the Office for National Statistics (here and here) and Eurostat (here). (They’re also mentioned in an answer to a parliamentary question in July, supplied by the ONS). They show that England’s population density in 2010 was projected to be 401 people per square kilometre by the ONS.
The Mail reports this as being 402.1 per square km, just under 4 people higher than the Netherlands, which it reports as being 398.5 people per square km.
The parliamentary answer says:
Eurostat publishes estimates of population densities for all EU countries up to 2007 (see table tps00003 under main demographic indicators at [this link]
Table tps00003 – the table that the Office for National Statistics suggests we use to find out the population density of European countries – shows that in 2007, the Netherlands’ density was 485.3 people per square km. The Mail said that in 2010 it was 398.5.
Official stats from the Dutch equivalent of the ONS show that the Netherlands’ projected population density for 2010 is 491 people per square km. Over 90 people higher than the Daily Mail reports.
According to the ONS figures, England won’t reach that level until some time between 2031 and 2056. So how has the Mail been suggesting for years that England is the most overcrowded country in Europe?
Nearly a fifth of the Netherlands is covered by water. The Dutch government takes account of that by measuring population density by land area only. Eurostat includes this measurement in its own figures, and the ONS advises we use Eurostat figures to measure population density. But for some reason, the Mail ignores this.
This needn’t be deliberate. It could be that the Mail or whoever provided the paper with these figures never actually noticed the Eurostat numbers, and made their own calculations that didn’t take account of water in the Netherlands.
Whatever the reason for the omission, it’s clear that England is only the most overcrowded country in Europe if you ignore official Dutch figures, ignore the figures the ONS suggest and decide that Dutch people can live underwater.
Categories: Immigration |
I pointed out that this article was utterly pointless as England is not an official country as such and that if Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were included, as the other parts of the UK, the density figures would be much lower. Scotland in particular has a lower population density. Of course they never published it – why let the facts get in the way of some good old rabble-rousing and hate-stirring?
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Good point, Dave. I am surprised that DM didn’t go further and compare the population density of, say, London and Friesland (province in the Netherlands).
Anyway, some people may be interested to find out that UK as a whole is only ranked 51 on population density list:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_and_dependent_territories_by_population_density
correct Dave – they are in effect trying to compare one of the component entities of one sovereign nation with entire sovereign nations. It would probably be a bit lost on your average Daily Mail reader to point out that other countries in Europe have similar component entitites that have higher population densities – eg the German State of North Rhine-Westphalia has a population density of 524 people per square km (and a larger population than the whole of the Netherlands).
Why let facts get in the way of right-wing middle-class victimhood?
I always thought it was Monaco! Don’t know why!
I know this is an old post, but in case anyone is reading back through as I am, I thought I’d also point out that population density is also a completely irrelevant number when determining ‘overcrowdedness’. Demographers refer to the relationship between population and resources to determine whether a place is over populated or not. Hence Singapore is not overpopulated, but Australia is in danger of becoming so.