Yorkshire and The Humber ranks fifth of the nine English regions in terms of its proportion of ethnic minority residents. About one in 12 people living in the region are from ethnic groups other than White British.

According to the 2001 census, the Yorkshire and The Humber region has a total population of 5.1 million. It is the fifth largest of England's nine regions, covering an area of 15,420 square kilometres, and has a population density of 328 people per square kilometre.

• Profile of the Yorkshire and The Humber region, including data on population, health, housing and employment (Office for National Statistics website)

Although there are many large cities and towns in the region, large areas of Yorkshire and The Humber are very rural. This means that the degree of ethnic diversity varies considerably throughout the region, with the vast majority of people from ethnic minority groups concentrated in urban areas. For example, while the three major cities of Leeds, Sheffield and Bradford account for just a third of the region's total population, they are home to 65% of all Asians and 70% of all black people.

There are almost as many Asian people - 222,000 - living in this region than all other ethnic minority groups combined. This figure represents 4.5% of the total population. Only London (12%) and the West Midlands (7.3%) have a greater proportion of Asian residents, although both have far larger Asian populations in numerical terms.

Population by ethnic group

Yorkshire and The Humber

Population: 4,964,833

Ethnic group/sub-group		Population	Proportion compared to national average
White		4,641,263	93.4% 90.9%
	British	4,551,394	91.6% 86.9%
	Irish	32,735	0.65% 1.27%
	Other	57,134	1.15% 2.66%
Mixed		44,995	0.90% 1.30%
	White and Black Caribbean	18,187	0.36% 0.47%
	White and Black African	4,094	0.08% 0.15%
	White and Asian	14,218	0.28% 0.37%
	Other mixed	8,496	0.17% 0.30%
Asian		222,486	4.48% 4.57%
	Indian	51,493	1.03% 2.09%
	Pakistani	146,330	2.94% 1.43%
	Bangladeshi	12,330	0.24% 0.56%
	Other Asian	12,333	0.24% 0.48%
Black		34,262	0.69% 2.30%
	Caribbean	21,308	0.42% 1.14%
	African	9,625	0.19% 0.96%
	Other Black	3,329	0.06% 0.19%
Chinese		12,340	0.24% 0.44%
Other ethnic group		9,487	0.19% 0.43%

Source: Census 2001, Office for National Statistics

Yorkshire and The Humber is one of only three English regions with more Pakistani residents than Indian ones, and the ratio here - nearly three to one - is far greater than in the North West and the North East. The main reason for this is the remarkably large Pakistani population in Bradford; nearly 68,000 - almost half of all people from this group living in the entire region - live here, where they make up one in seven of all residents. This is the highest proportion of Pakistanis in the total population of any city in Europe. Across the entire region, there are nearly 150,000 people of Pakistani descent; only the West Midlands has marginally a greater number.

The proportions of non-Asian ethnic minority groups in the region are quite small. People from the White Other group make up the second most populous ethnic minority, but form just 1.2% of the population; this is the third lowest proportion among the nine English regions. The proportion of Chinese residents is the joint lowest in England, at just a quarter of one percent of all residents.

Black people make up the third largest ethnic minority group in Yorkshire and The Humber. Proportionally, the Black groups make up 0.7% of the population; this is lower than all but three of the other eight English regions. Out of a total of 34,000 black people in the region, two-thirds are of Caribbean origin. Nearly a third of all black people in the region live in Sheffield, where they form nearly 2% of the local population. Leeds also has a sizeable black population, about 1.5%, but elsewhere numbers are very small - Barnsley, for example, has just 164 black residents out of a total population of 220,000.

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