Dundee - Demography

Demography

According to the 2001 census, the City of Dundee had a population of 154,674. A more recent population estimate of the City of Dundee has been recorded at 152,320 in 2008. The demographic make-up of the population is much in line with the rest of Scotland. The age group from 30 to 44 forms the largest portion of the population (20%). The median age of males and females living in Dundee was 37 and 40 years respectively, compared to 37 and 39 years for those in the whole of Scotland.

The place of birth of the town's residents was 94.16% United Kingdom (including 87.85% from Scotland), 0.42% Republic of Ireland, 1.33% from other European Union countries, and 3.09% from elsewhere in the world. The economic activity of residents aged 16–74 was 35.92% in full-time employment, 10.42% in part-time employment, 4.25% self-employed, 5.18% unemployed, 7.82% students with jobs, 4.73% students without jobs, 15.15% retired, 4.54% looking after home or family, 7.92% permanently sick or disabled, and 4.00% economically inactive for other reasons. Compared with the average demography of Scotland, Dundee has both low proportions of people born outside the United Kingdom and for people over 75 years old.

Natives of Dundee are called Dundonians and are often recognisable by their distinctive dialect of Scots as well as their accent, which most noticeably substitutes the monophthong /e/ in place of the diphthong /ai/. Dundee, and Scotland more generally, saw rapid population increase at end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, with the city's population increasing from 12,400 in 1751 to 30,500 in 1821. Of particular significance was an influx of Irish workers in the early to mid-19th century, attracted by the prospect of employment in the textiles industries. In 1851, 18.9% of people living in Dundee were of Irish birth.

The city has also attracted immigrants from Italy, fleeing poverty and famine, and Poland, seeking refuge from the anti-Jewish pogroms in the 19th century, and later, World War II in the 20th. Today, Dundee has a sizeable ethnic minority population, and has the third highest Asian population (~3,500) in Scotland after Glasgow and Edinburgh.

The city's universities draw a large number of students from abroad (mostly Irish and EU but with an increasing number from countries in the Far East), and students account for 14.2% of the population, the highest proportion of the four largest Scottish cities.