Other White (classification of ethnicity in the United Kingdom)

The term Other White is a classification of ethnicity in the United Kingdom and has been used in documents such as the 2001 UK Census to describe people who self-identify as white persons who are neither British nor Irish. The category does not comprise a single ethnic group but is instead a method of identification for white people who are not represented by other white census categories. This means that the Other White group contains a diverse collection of people with different countries of birth, religions and languages. Along with White British and White Irish, the category does not appear in Northern Ireland, where only one single "White" classification was presented to respondents.

Demographics

In the 2001 UK Census, the majority of people living in England and Wales ticking the 'Other White' ethnic group specified their ethnicity as European. Four out of five of the 'Other White' category (i.e. not British or Irish) were born overseas. A third were born in a Western European country other than the UK, and one in seven were born in an Eastern European country. The Other White group is largely of working age, with only one in ten aged over 65 and one in seven under 16 at the time of the 2001 census. This does vary according to the stated country of birth, with people born in the UK being disproportionately young. Polish and Italian respondents had a larger proportion of over 65s, which reflects the migration of Poles and Italians to Britain after the Second World War. A wide number of religions are represented in the Other White group. In the census, the largest faith group, 63 per cent, identified themselves as Christian, with 16 per cent defining themselves as without religion, nine per cent as Muslims, and two per cent as Jewish.