In this third part in our series on how the UK has changed in the past 25 years, we turn to demographics, immigration, social attitudes and LGBTQ+ lives.
Demographics
Athina Vlachantoni, professor of gerontology and social policy, University of Southampton
Jane Falkingham, professor of demography and international social policy, University of Southampton
Maria Evandrou, professor of gerontology, University of Southampton
The UK population grew in size from just under 59 million in 2000 to 69.5 million in 2025, and is now projected to reach 71 million by 2034. Contrast this with sharp population declines in eastern and southern Europe that prompted a European parliament resolution in 2021 on reversing demographic trends in EU regions.
The UK’s population growth reflects recent trends in the three drivers of population change – fertility, mortality and migration – which have implications for future generations and the country as a whole.
The UK population is ageing
The 2001 UK census showed that around 16% of the population (9.5 million people) were 65 and over, while just under 2% or 1.1 million were 85 and over. By 2025 the Office for National Statistics estimated that the over-65s and over-85s accounted for 20% and 3% of the population respectively.
More people living longer is both a success for the human race and a challenge for policymakers and societies. A woman and man aged 65 today are expected to live on average for another 23 and 20 years respectively, with important consequences for how long pensions and other savings need to last.
How has the UK changed since the start of the century? From Blair to Burnham, from the dotcom era to AI agents, time has certainly not stood still. In this six-part series, a team of some 35 experts look at everything from defence spending to species populations to the rise of populism to try and make sense of the intervening years.
The House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee found in 2025 that the UK is “strikingly unprepared for an ageing society”, as a result of increasing costs and a shrinking tax base. Incidentally, despite women living longer than men, a greater proportion of their lives are expected to be spent in poor health.
The UK is becoming more ethnically diverse
In 2001, 11.8% of the population was from minority ethnic communities, whereas by the 2021 census it was 18%. Although white British people still constitute the largest part of the population (over 74%), their proportion has decreased. There have been slow increases in people from Asian ethnic communities (9.3%), white “other” (6.2%) and black groups (4%), reflecting patterns of both past and more recent migration.
Migrants contribute to the growth of the population and – importantly – the labour market, driving economic growth. As the Windrush generation ages, we are seeing more diversity in our population across all age groups.
Families are getting smaller
Women are having fewer children. The total fertility rate stood at 1.7 children per woman in 2000, and after a revival in the mid-2010s, reached 1.4 in 2024, the lowest since records began.
The average age of women at first birth in England stood at 31 in 2024 compared to 29 in 2000. This is due to a combination of factors, including increased participation in higher education, delayed marriage and partnership formation, and younger generations’ desire to establish a career, get on the property ladder and achieve financial stability before starting a family.
The Resolution Foundation has warned that “the recent fertility decline appears to be driven, in part, by financial constraints facing young non-graduates, rather than a shift in what people actually want”.
The consequences
As a result of these three demographic shifts – the ageing population, increased ethnic diversity and smaller families – the shape of households is changing. Married couples made up 66% of families in 2025, compared to 70% in 2001. The proportion is decreasing as a result of other family types becoming more prevalent, including lone-parent, cohabiting couple and civil-partner couple families.
The proportion of single-person households has remained relatively stable over the last 25 years (around 30% of all households). However, the composition has changed, with the proportion of 65 and overs in this category increasing from about 46% in 2001 to nearly 50% today.
Demographic changes are taking place at the same time as, and partly because of, the broader socioeconomic changes which have led to greater inequalities for people across the life course. For example, research by the Resolution Foundation has shown that the bottom half of the income distribution is older and more ethnically mixed than 30 years ago, and more likely to be childless and single than before.
Immigration
Rob McNeil, deputy director, Migration Observatory, University of Oxford
There are a lot more foreign-born people in the UK in 2026 than there were in 2001. The exact number is uncertain because the UK’s migration data has been sketchy since the 2021 census, with some fairly wild fluctuations during this period, as you can see in the graph below. But in 2001 the UK’s total foreign-born population was 4.9 million, and by 2024 it was estimated at 13.1 million.
UK net migration and immigration (1991-present)
When Tony Blair’s New Labour had stormed to power in 1997, net migration was 48,000. A few years earlier, it had even been negative. Net migration was a niche concept in those days, as the impact of migration on population growth had only been considered a minor issue compared to how it affected culture or the labour market.
By 2001 net migration had more than tripled to around 180,000. This was a pivotal moment when it started to get political traction, with arguments for numerical limits starting to be discussed fairly prominently in policy circles.
Levels rose even more after the expansion of the EU in 2004. They dipped a little after the 2008 financial crisis, but then rose sharply from 2012-16 despite policies introduced in 2011 by David Cameron’s coalition government to try to reach a “net migration target” of under 100,000. It peaked at more than 330,000 in 2015-16, with much of the influx from new EU member states. Concerns about controlling the numbers of people arriving from these countries contributed significantly to the UK’s decision to leave the EU.
Yet migration policies since Brexit haven’t led to lower net migration. After the pandemic, the Boris Johnson government liberalised migration policy, which sent net migration rocketing to a new peak of over 900,000 in 2023. The numbers have been reduced sharply after the governments of Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer undid those liberalisations. The May 2026 estimates place net migration at 171,000, almost the same level as 2001.
Asylum seekers
In 2001 the Labour government was dealing with a spike in asylum applications – and a media backlash against the UK being a perceived “soft touch” in this area – by implementing various measures to discourage claimants. The measures included preventing asylum seekers from working, restricting access to welfare, and “dispersal accommodation” that housed people around the UK to take pressure off London and the south-east.
In 2026 the UK is once again facing a spike in asylum applications, and the Labour government is introducing a suite of new policies designed to deter asylum seekers from travelling to the UK or claiming asylum.
Asylum applications (1979-2025)
As part of that challenge, refugees trying to get to the UK from France has remained a major issue. In the summer of 2001 refugees were filmed jumping on to Eurostar trains near the channel tunnel entrance in the Sangatte area not far from Calais, prompting outrage from media and policy commentators.
Sangatte was then the site of a refugee camp which had become a particular bone of diplomatic contention. It was commonly framed by the British as a ploy by France to offload responsibility for asylum seekers to the UK. They claimed the French authorities did little to stop residents trying to escape to the UK through the tunnel, not unlike today’s UK/France blame games on channel migrants.
The quick fix was a deal between the two countries to close the camp in 2002, but this led to the emergence of a migrant shanty-town in the Calais area dubbed “the jungle”. Now, refugees attempted to stow away in the backs of lorries or other vehicles crossing to the UK through the port.
Small boat crossings (2018-25)
A massive investment in security at the port made these lorry crossings increasingly difficult, so in late 2018 a number of asylum seekers tried a different tactic, travelling to the UK in small boats. Repeated efforts by the authorities have since failed to prevent these crossings, and numbers have ballooned. They peaked at 45,800 in 2022, but were still 41,000 in 2025. Figures for 2026 currently look a bit lower, though it’s not possible to accurately predict what the total will be. Most of those who successfully make the crossing claim asylum when they arrive in the UK.
The persistence of the UK’s migration issues over the last quarter of a century demonstrates that certain things are not easy to fix and that some types of migration are easier to reduce than others. The UK is party to global treaties that require it to offer protection to asylum seekers. Yet these people are expensive for the state to process and support, so the government would prefer fewer (or none) and makes efforts to stop them getting here.
But after a quarter of a century of spending, deterrence efforts and policy changes, little has really shifted except the tactics used by asylum seekers to enter the UK. On the other hand, Brexit and the liberalisations under Johnson – and the reductions since 2024 – show how government policy can make a difference to net migration. But if reading immigration stories sometimes feels like Groundhog Day, now you know why.
Social attitudes
Michael Skey, senior lecturer in communication and media studies, Loughborough University
Immigration has risen to the top of political and media agendas over the last 25 years. It has underpinned some of the most momentous shifts the country has seen, most notably Brexit and then the subsequent reshaping of the political landscape in favour of the populist right.
Polling data shows that concerns about immigration tend to rise and fall in response to certain issues – national elections, EU enlargement, Brexit. But also noteworthy is the changing nature of migration as a perceived problem and the identity of those who articulate such fears.
Twenty-five years ago, fears about migration were shaped by neo-Powellite fears about the “swamping” of (white) British culture. But the terms of the debate were changed somewhat by EU expansion, as migrants from eastern Europe got categorised as a novel threat for taking jobs, undercutting wages and changing the landscape of local towns.
Post Brexit, the “small boats” phenomenon has become a huge talking point. Fuelled by the right-wing press and social media networks, it far outweighs the actual numbers of people entering the country in this way, which is below 50,000 a year.
When it comes to who is concerned about immigration, the subject has long been a key concern for those who are older, less educated, more likely to identify as English, and – in many cases – live in areas with relatively little experience of immigration.
The populist right – first Ukip and more recently Reform and Restore – has successfully leveraged the fears of this group. But there is also growing evidence that migration is viewed as a concern by other constituencies within Britain, including ethnic minorities born and brought up in the country.
This was demonstrated by support for Brexit among some south Asian groups in particular. Interestingly, from the mid-2010s onwards, pollsters started treating race and immigration as separate categories: previously if a respondent said they were concerned about borders it was assumed they also had concerns about Britain’s racial composition, whereas now these are tracked as two separate issues.
The liberalism paradox
Equally interesting is the extent to which these debates have taken place against a backdrop in which British people have become more tolerant and more liberal over the last 25 years in everything from LGBTQ people to gender roles.
As data from the National Centre for Social Research shows, there was little change in attitudes during the 1980s and 1990s. But then, according to the centre:
Almost every year since 2011 has witnessed a swing towards a more liberal outlook, such that, in our most recent survey, the scale score stands at 56, 15 points different from just over a decade ago.
Some have argued that growing numbers entering higher education may account for this increased liberalism, others that changing family and work relations have had a profound impact. The answer is likely to be a combination, but essentially what we have is a more liberal country that is increasingly exercised by the issues of migration and belonging. How do we make sense of this?
There is a notable divide between major cities and smaller towns, semi-rural and rural areas, with the cities being much more relaxed about migration and population diversity in general.
But even outside cities, the attitudes may not always be what they seem. In many cases, migration seems to have become a way for a whole range of people to articulate their anger at changes within local areas that are largely the outcome of wider structural developments. In particular, the savage cuts to public services in the so-called era of austerity.
Migrants have, at one time or another, been seen as responsible for a stagnating jobs market, growing hospital waiting lists, lack of affordable housing, collapsing social services, crumbling schools and various other problems. In other words, migration – and the spectre of the immigrant coming to take “our” homes, jobs and public spaces – is being used to provide some easy answers to very difficult questions.
Rory Fitzgerald, director of the European Social Survey, City St George’s, University of London
There is a general perception that Brexit and increasing support for anti-immigration political parties is due to rising intolerance. But in our analysis of data collected by the biennial European Social Survey (ESS) over 21 years, we find attitudes towards immigration have become significantly more positive over time.
We’ve asked three questions about immigration in every round of our survey: whether immigrants make the UK a worse or better place to live, if the cultural life is undermined or enriched by immigrants; and whether immigration is bad or good for the economy. These questions are all asked on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 indicating the most positive.
In the UK, 52.7% of respondents were the most positive about immigration (answering 7-10) in the most recent 2023-24 survey. This was second highest after Ireland, which scored 52.9%, of the 18 countries who took part in both the 2002-03 and 2023-24 surveys. In 2002-03 only 20% of Britons were as positive about immigration, compared to 31.8% in Ireland.
There is a similar pattern for the questions on the effect of immigrants on the economy and cultural life in the United Kingdom. On the cultural life between 2002-03 to 2023-24, the mean score has risen from 5.2 to 6.5, and from 4.4 to 6.4 when it comes to the economy.
LGBTQ and family attitudes
Attitudes towards homosexuality have become significantly more positive from the United Kingdom over the 21 years where data is available. One question we asked in the first and latest round of the survey was whether respondents agree with the statement that gays and lesbians are free to live their life as they wish. This was answered on a five-point scale: agree strongly; agree; neither agree nor disagree; disagree; and disagree strongly.
If we consider the percentage of those selecting strongly agree or agree, we find that tolerance has risen in the United Kingdom from 76.0% in 2002-03 to 90.2% in 2023-24 (similar patterns can again be found elsewhere).
Our data also found a softening in opposition to non-traditional family behaviours, as detailed here. This derives from looking at family values in depth in the 2006-07 and 2018-19 surveys. These gauged attitudes towards choosing never to have children; living with a partner without being married; having a child with a cohabiting partner while not married; having a full-time job with children aged under 3; and getting divorced with children aged under 12.
In all five areas, negative attitudes in the UK dropped over this 12-year period, while positive attitudes increased. There were still a “gendered double standard”, particularly in attitudes towards full-time employment with a young child and divorce, where women faced greater disapproval than men. However, disapproval fell for all areas over time.
Our data on increasing tolerance in the UK is supported further in this article. It includes data showing more positive attitudes to non-traditional family values, sexual relationships and abortion, compared to data collected as far back as 1984 in some cases.
The one area where prejudice has risen between 2016-22 is towards people who are transgender. This, perhaps, is something the ESS should cover in future. Yet while traditional media focuses on the divides between us, it’s worth remembering that the data almost exclusively and consistently shows attitudes are becoming more accepting over time.
LGBTQ+ lives
Carrie Paechter, professor emerita, childhood, youth and family life, Nottingham Trent University
One of the earliest changes to the lives and public perceptions of LGBTQ+ people over the last 25 years was the repeal of Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988. The act’s repeal in Scotland in 2000 and in 2003 in England and Wales meant schools no longer felt forbidden to support young LGBTQ+ young people or to discuss LGBTQ+ parented families – albeit there were still schools overtly conforming with the act 15 years later.
The repeal of section 28 can be seen as ushering in a series of changes that significantly improved the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in civil society. The Gender Recognition Act 2004 meant trans people’s experienced gender could be legally recognised in the form of a gender recognition certificate. The process to acquire one is long, complicated and expensive, however.
The Equality Act 2010 protects individuals and groups from discrimination across society based on nine “protected characteristics”, including gender reassignment and sexual orientation. It includes a “public sector equality duty” which requires public bodies such as schools, hospitals and local councils actively to consider how their policies, services and decisions affect people with protected characteristics.
Gay, lesbian and bisexual couples have also been permitted to enter civil partnerships since 2004, and to marry since 2013 (2020 in Northern Ireland). Single-sex couples have had the right to adopt in England and Wales since 2002, in Scotland since 2009 and in Northern Ireland since 2013. It is clear, therefore, that, over the past 25 years, LGBTQ+ people enjoyed a long period of improving and increasing inclusion into civil society.
The challenges
These changes, however, don’t apply equally to all groups within the LGBTQ+ spectrum. They mostly incorporate the assumption that people are (cis or trans) men and women, and make little allowance for queer and non-binary identities. For example, non-binary people cannot marry as non-binary, because marriages must be registered either as same-sex or as opposite-sex.
My research into non-binary young people’s experience in schools also found that toilet provision was problematic, with some leaving the premises to find suitable facilities and others holding on until they got home. There is also little recognition of polyamorous relationships within either legislation or wider society, with polyamorous parenting in particular ignored in school sex and relationship policies.
The situation for trans people is even more precarious, following a UK Supreme Court ruling in 2025 that “sex” in the Equality Act should be taken to refer to “biological sex”. The new draft code of practice to reflect this has brought fears that trans people will lose access to such things as toilet provision and domestic abuse support.
Meanwhile, puberty blocking medication can no longer be prescribed to under 18s, forcing them to undergo puberty in opposition to their experienced gender. Reform and the Conservatives are now respectively threatening to also rescind all or part of the Equality Act, should they get into power.
So while the last 25 years have mostly seen increased freedom acceptance and inclusion for many LGBTQ+ people, these benefits may have come at a price for those who do not fit in so easily, exacerbating their marginalisation.
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