Britain | The 2021 census

Inner London’s population is much lower than expected

Since money follows people, that is a problem

A pedestrian passes shops along Regent Street in central London, UK, on Wednesday, June 29, 2022. Regent Street, London's premier shopping thoroughfare, is struggling to shake off the lingering effects of Covid-19. Photographer: Hollie Adams/Bloomberg via Getty Images

For almost as long as Britain has been conducting population censuses, people have objected to the results. “I do not believe one word of what is said about the increase of the population,” argued William Cobbett, a pamphleteer, in 1822, two decades after the first one. In the 1950s women were said to falsify their ages, lingering too long in their 20s. Manchester complained about the undercounting of its population in 2001.

This article appeared in the Britain section of the print edition under the headline “Vanishing Londoners”

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