General Information » Facts & Figures » Population

London’s population grew rapidly during the 19th and 20th centuries – it was the most populated city in the world until it was overtaken by New York in 1925. There are now an estimated 7,517,700 people living in the Greater London area. However, the capital’s wider metropolitan area is home to closer to 12 million people. London is also host to one in eight of the UK’s population and has three million households. More recently, the demography has altered considerably; more than a quarter of London’s population is now from an ethnic background, the largest non-white population of any European city. London has more women than men and its population is younger when compared with the rest of the country; 47% of the population is aged between 16 and 44. The average life expectancy in some of the city’s more affluent boroughs, such as Chelsea and Kensington, is 82 for men and 86 for women, which is noticeably higher than the national average of 76 and 81.