- Friday, April 19, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
INDIA has overtaken China and New Zealand to become the third-largest country of birth behind Australia and England in Australia, the latest census figures released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics has said.
The latest data also revealed that the total number of people of Indian origin went up by almost 50 per cent since the last census was held, NRI Affairs website reported.
Those born in India (673,352) were the next largest group after England and had grown from 217,963 since the 2016 census.
Among other figures that the census showed are: 27.6 per cent of the population were born abroad; 61,860 international visitors were in the island continent at the time of census collection; the top five languages used at home other than English were Mandarin (2.7 per cent), Arabic (1.4 per cent), Vietnamese (1.3 per cent), Cantonese (1.2 per cent) and Punjabi (0.9 per cent); the top five ancestries were English (33 per cent), Australian (29.9 per cent), Irish (9.5 per cent), Scottish (8.6 per cent) and Chinese (5.5 per cent) and the top five religious affiliations included ‘no religion’ (38.9 per cent), Catholic (20 per cent), Anglican (9.8 per cent), Islam (3.2 per cent) and Hinduism (2.7 per cent).
The census also showed that Australia has welcomed more than a million people (10,20,007) on its soil since 2017. The largest increase in country by birth, apart from the home state, was India with 2,20,000 additional people.
The second highest increase in country of birth was Nepal, with an additional 70,000 (67,752) people, which means the population of Nepali-born more than doubled since 2016 (a whopping increase of 123.7 per cent).
