Population of Sydney

The Sydney metropolitan area has a population of 3.27 million (1996) residents, who call themselves Sydneysiders.

About 22,000 of these people live in the central area of the city proper.

The Sydney conurbation (including the Central Coast, Newcastle, and Wollongong), designated as the Sydney Statistical Division, has an estimated population of 4.04 million (1999).

The conurbation contains nearly two-thirds of the state population.

Sydney’s population grew steadily after the city was founded in 1788.

Sydney had about 50,000 residents by the late 1840s; 100,000 by the mid-1860s; 500,000 around the turn of the century; 1 million by the early 1920s; 2 million by the late 1950s; and 3 million by about 1990.

Sydney’s population density is among the lowest of any major world city, in part because suburban expansion began in earnest in the late 19th century after mechanized transportation became available.

Until around 1850, the population of Sydney increased by about 10 percent annually, peaking at about 3,000 additional residents per year from 1841 to 1846.

The growth rate was more varied in the second half of the 19th century.

The city had periods of slower growth in the 1850s, when population was lost or diverted to the Australian gold fields, and in the 1890s, when a combination of drought and economic recession prevailed.

Economic and political factors continued to affect growth rates during the 20th century.

Higher growth occurred in the prosperous decade of 1911 to 1921, followed by much lower growth during the Great Depression years of the late 1920s and early 1930s and again after World War II.

Soon after the war, however, Australia introduced an aggressive campaign to attract migrant workers from other countries to assist economic growth and development.
This brought a period of higher population growth.

In the second half of the 20th century, declining birth rates and a net loss of native residents to other parts of the country meant Sydney’s growth depended increasingly on immigration from other countries and movement from rural areas to the city.

Ups and downs in growth rates since the 1970s thus largely reflect variations in immigration rates.

The importance of immigration in Sydney’s growth is reflected in the city’s many ethnic groups.

Immigration before World War II was mostly from the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Immediately after the war, it was from the United Kingdom and northwestern Europe, followed by a wave of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe.

Most recently, immigrants from the Middle East and Asia, including refugees from the war-torn countries of Vietnam and Lebanon, have settled in Sydney.

By 1996 Sydney’s residents included immigrants from the following countries, by number of Sydney residents: the United Kingdom (198,200), China, including Hong Kong (99,600), New Zealand (66,900), Vietnam (59,400), Italy (53,400), the former Yugoslavia (51,600), Lebanon (51,000), the Philippines (42,400), Greece (37,600), South Africa (26,640), India (25,400), Fiji (23,100), Germany (20,900), and South Korea (20,700).

Another 25 nations each have anywhere from 5,000 to 20,000 people represented in Sydney.

Much larger numbers of Sydney-born residents have parents or grandparents who immigrated to the city.

New ethnic groups have tended to settle in a single area for mutual support before integrating themselves more with the general community.

Sydney thus has definite Vietnamese, Italian, South African, Indian, Korean, and Chinese districts, among others. None, however, has ever been an ethnic ghetto.

Few obvious racial or ethnic tensions exist between groups. Schools have become more ethnically and culturally diverse, and the addition of new cuisines and cultural activities has added a richness to life in Sydney.

Patterns of religious worship have generally changed along with immigration patterns, as different religious groups become part of the society.

Until World War II, the Anglican Church of Australia (known as the Church of England until 1981) had the largest number of members, reflecting the city’s predominantly Anglo-Saxon population.

After the war, Catholicism became more prevalent than other Christian denominations in Sydney.

The postwar decades saw increasing representation of non-Christian faiths, especially Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism.

The population of Sydney also includes about 30,000 Aboriginal Australians, the indigenous people of Australia.

Many of Sydney’s Aboriginal people live in the Redfern neighborhood in the heart of the city, with a second historically important concentration at La Perouse.

Their standard of living is generally lower, and their unemployment rate higher, than that of other Sydney residents.

To help combat these inequities, the Aboriginal people have formed a number of self-help organizations.