Sydney - Demographics

Demographics

The 2006 census reported 4,119,190 residents in the Sydney Statistical Division, of which 3,641,422 lived in Sydney's Urban Centre. Inner Sydney was the most densely populated place in Australia with 4,023 inhabitants per square kilometre (10,420 /sq mi). In the 2006 census, the most common self-described ancestries identified for Sydney residents were Australian, English, Irish, Scottish, and Chinese. The Census also recorded that 1.1% of Sydney's population identified as being of indigenous origin, and 31.7% were born overseas.

Asian Australians made up 18.8% of the population in Sydney's Urban Centre and 16.9% of the wider Statistical Division. The three major sources of immigrants are the United Kingdom, China and New Zealand, followed by Vietnam, Lebanon, India, Italy, and the Philippines. Many residents are native speakers of English; many have a second language, the most common being Arabic (predominantly Lebanese Arabic), Cantonese, Mandarin, Greek and Vietnamese. Sydney has the seventh-largest percentage of foreign-born individuals in the world. Immigrants account for 75% of Sydney's annual population growth.

The median age of Sydney residents is 36; 15.4% of the population is over 65 years old. 15.2% of residents have educational attainment equal to at least a bachelor's degree, In the 2011 census, 60.9% of the residents identified themselves as Christians, 17.6% had no religion, 7.6% left the question blank, 4.7% were Muslims, 4.1% were Buddhists, 2.6% were Hindus, 0.9% were Jewish and 1.6% were another religion.