Where are we going?
For the last century England’s population has gradually shifted southeast, but what does the latest Census tell us about where the population’s centre-of-gravity is heading?
This post is inspired by James Gleeson’s excellent 2016 post Tracking England’s Shifting Centre-of-Gravity Over Time and my curiosity to update it with the new Census.
His historical analysis showed the centre of England’s population started the 19th Century just east of Coventry, and headed steadily north for over a hundred years, up the M69 in the direction of Leicester. Around the First World Ward, this reversed, with the centre of population taking a turn southeast. At the time of the 2011 Census it was last seen racing past Rugby on the A5 (Watling Street) heading towards London.
So what happened since 2011? We have two sources, the annual Mid Year Estimates (MYEs) produced by the Office for National Statistics, and now the new 2021 Census. The map below is what these show.
So from 2011 to 2021 the centre of population continued to move southeast and has now entered West Northamptonshire, close to the Houlton housing development in Rugby. Appropriately enough, it is right in the middle of DIRFT, the country’s largest railfreight logistics interchange, just off Junction 18 of the M1. Specifically, it’s in the car park of the Sainsbury’s Daventry Distribution Centre. This area is called the logistics Golden Triangle for good reason, within 4 hours drive of 90% of Britain’s population.
The mid-year estimates for the intervening years show a slowing trend, and then an abrupt break with Census 2021 putting it noticeably west and no further south than the 2020 estimates. Of course it is normal for the Census to differ from the estimates (that’s the whole point of doing an actual Census), and in the next few months the ONS will publish rebased mid-year estimates from 2012-2020 to make them consistent.
It will be interesting to see the degree to which the ONS rebasing shows this shift in direction to be a gradual trend over the last ten years, or a sudden shift because of Covid. And if Covid has affected it, how much it is temporary or permanent? The 2021 Census in England took place during partial lockdown, with everyone asked to work remotely if they could. Many people may not have been living at their normal address on Census day.
To the extent this shows a real effect, rather than a Covid Census artifact, what might be the cause? James’s earlier post showed elegantly how population was following jobs, with housing trailing some way behind. At some point this lag – a failure to build homes where jobs are growing fastest – will inevitably constrain people’s ability to follow those jobs.
If so, you’d expect to see the results of that in high house prices, lower productivity growth, and staff shortages.
Methodology Note – I’ve used Mid Layer Super Output Areas (MSOA) – a census geography roughly similar in size to an electoral ward. I’ve taken the geographical centroid of each MSOA, and weighted them by population. For 2011 to 2020 I’ve used the 2011 MSOAs, and for the 2021 Census I’ve used the new 2021 MSOAs. Note this analysis is England-only because GB or UK data not available yet – Scotland took the sensible decision to delay their Census a year, so it wasn’t so badly distorted by Covid.
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