Christianity is in decline, millennials are catching up to boomers, and everyone was at home. Insights from the pandemic census night
Almost half of Australians have a parent born overseas, and more than one in four were born internationally, according to the 2021 census results.Almost half of Australians have a parent born overseas, and more than one in four were born internationally, according to the 2021 census results.Cast your mind back to last August and you probably remember filling out the census, alongside millions of other Australians.
There’s also a growing number of older Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, with more than 47,000 aged 65 and over compared to 31,000 in 2016 and 21,000 in 2011.Australia continues to be a multicultural nation. Almost half of Australians have a parent born overseas, and more than one in four were born internationally.
In the 1996 census, almost two in five people were boomers. In 2021, each group has more than 5.4 million people, with just 5,662 more boomers than millennials. That gap is likely to narrow, with the millennial population increasing from 20.4% in 2011 to 21.5% in 2021 while boomers decreased by almost 4%.This was the first time the census collected information on long-term health conditions.
At the same time, more people are identifying as atheist or agnostic. Almost 40% of the population responded “no religion” on the 2021 census, an increase of 10% in the past five years. Two-thirds of households own their home outright or with a mortgage, similar to the rate in 1996. But the proportion of households that own outright has dropped to 31%.For the first time, more than 1 million families are made up of single parents, and 75% of them are women. As a proportion of families, this has increased from just shy of 15% in 1996 to almost 16% in 2021.The proportion of couples living together without children has steadily grown in the past two decades. Of 5.