Demographics of Paris

Historical population

Population of Paris from Julius Caesar to the French Revolution.

City proper, urban area, and metropolitan area population from 1801 to 2008.

Notes for the table:

• until the 1830s, urbanization was contained within the administrative borders of the City of Paris; urban area figures before 1835 are thus the same as the city proper figures
• the phenomenon of long commutes did not appear until the 1960s; metropolitan area figures before 1968 are thus essentially the same as the urban area figures
• time comparisons should be exercised with care, as statistical borders vary year after year. E.g., the metropolitan area figure for 1968 is within the 1968 borders of the metropolitan area, whereas the metropolitan area figure for 1975 is within the 1975 expanded borders of the metropolitan area.

Historical Population

	City proper	Urban area	Metropolitan area	Comments
59 BC	25,000			Gallic population of the city at the start of the Roman conquest of Gaul.
150 AD	80,000			Peak of Roman era.
510	30,000			Losses after invasions of 3rd and 4th centuries.
1000	20,000			Lowest point after Viking invasions.
1200	110,000			Recovery of the High Middle Ages.
1328	250,000			Blossoming of the 13th century, golden age of King Saint Louis.
1500	200,000			Losses of the Black Plague and the Hundred Years' War.
1550	275,000			Renaissance recovery.
1594	210,000			Losses of religious and civil wars.
1634	420,000			Spectacular recovery under King Henry IV and Richelieu.
1700	515,000
1750	565,000
1789	630,000			Peak of prosperous 18th century.
	City proper	Urban area	Metropolitan area	Comments
1801	546,856			Losses of French Revolution and wars.
1811	622,636
1817	718,966
1831	785,862
1835		1,000,000
1836	899,313
1841	935,261
1846	1,053,897
1851	1,053,262
1856	1,174,346
1861	1,696,141			New city limits; population in 1856 in the new city limits was 1,538,613.
1863		2,000,000		Fastest historical growth under Emperor Napoleon III and Haussmann.
1866	1,825,274
1872	1,851,792			Temporary stagnation due to the losses of the Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War and the civil war of the Paris Commune and the Third Republic's brutal retribution towards the city.
1876	1,988,806
1881	2,269,023
1885		3,000,000
1886	2,344,550
1891	2,447,957
1896	2,536,834
	City proper	Urban area	Metropolitan area	Comments
1901	2,714,068
1905		4,000,000
1906	2,763,393
1911	2,888,110	4,500,000
1921	2,906,472	4,850,000		Temporary stagnation due to losses of First World War.
1926	2,871,429	5,160,008
1931	2,891,020	5,674,419
1936	2,829,753	5,784,072
1946	2,725,374	5,600,000		Losses of Second World War.
1954	2,850,189	6,436,296
1962	2,790,091	7,384,363		Fastest population growth in the 20th century.
1968	2,590,771	8,196,746	8,368,000	End of postwar baby boom, end of immigration surplus for Paris; henceforth migration flows from the rest of France become negative, population growth is significantly slower.
1975	2,299,830	8,549,898	9,096,000
1982	2,176,243	8,706,963	9,362,000
1990	2,152,423	9,318,821	10,291,851
1999	2,125,851	9,644,507	11,174,743
2008	2,211,297	10,354,675	12,089,098
Sources: City proper figures from 1801 on, urban area figures from 1954 on, and metropolitan area figures from 1990 on are official census figures. City proper figures before 1801 and urban area figures before 1954 are estimates from various sources. Metropolitan area figures before 1990 were reconstructed by Ph. Julien of INSEE by applying the current INSEE definition of metropolitan areas to past censuses.

Immigration

Outside of the touristic areas and expensive historical neighbourhoods, modern buildings provide housing to Parisians. Here, in the 13th arrondissement of Paris, a neighbourhood of high rise apartment buildings with a large Eastern Asian (mainly Vietnamese and Chinese) population.

Since the Middle Ages, at which time it was the largest city of the Western World, Paris has always attracted foreigners. From the Dutch and Swedish students of the Latin Quarter in the 14th century to the English, Scottish and Irish Jacobite refugees in the 17th century, from the Polish nationalist refugees in the early 19th century to the Belgian, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish workers in the late 19th century, from the Sephardic Jews of North Africa in the middle of the 20th century to the Africans and Eastern Asians of today, Paris has received waves after waves of immigrants. Today, like other world cities, Paris is largely a multicultural city.

French censuses are forbidden to ask questions regarding ethnicity or religion, and therefore it is not possible to know the ethnic composition of the metropolitan area of Paris. Still, some relevant data can be extracted from French censuses. At the 1999 census, there were 2,169,406 people living in the metropolitan area of Greater Paris who were born outside of Metropolitan France, which was 19.4% of the total population of the metropolitan area. As a comparison: at the 2001 UK census, 19.5% of the total population of the Greater London metropolitan area was born outside of the (metropolitan) United Kingdom, while at the 2000 US census 27.5% of the total population of the New York metropolitan area was born outside of the United States, and 31.9% of the total population of the Greater Los Angeles area was born outside of the United States. Over 46% of the population in the Greater Toronto Area was born outside of Canada.

At the 1999 French census, there were 474,768 people living in the metropolitan area of Greater Paris who were living outside of Metropolitan France in 1990, which was 4.2% of the total population of the metropolitan area in 1999.

Patterns of immigration to Paris have changed significantly in the 1990s. Portuguese immigration has significantly decreased, while immigration from other regions of the world has increased. The most important groups of immigrants today are the following:

• North and West Africans: the immigration of these two groups has been substantially reduced^{[citation needed]} by a tightening of the borders engineered by successive French governments. In the 1990s, immigrants from North Africa and West Africa came mostly through family reunification (women and children coming to live with their husband or father already living in France). An unknown number of North Africans and West Africans have also come illegally outside of these reunifications. Although some have been deported back to Africa, most of these illegal immigrants are still in France, without papers, living with the threat of deportation should they be discovered. However, thousands of illegal immigrants were given official papers under the center-left government of Lionel Jospin in the late 1990s, after pressure from French associations defending the rights of immigrants^{[citation needed]}).
• Chinese people: Although Paris has had a Chinese community for over a century, immigration has increased steadily in recent decades. Immigration is predominately from Northeast China and the city of Wenzhou in Zhejiang province. Illegal immigration is also a concern.
• Eastern Europeans, a significant proportion from Romania, a group on the rise since the fall of the Berlin Wall
• Middle Easterners

Compared with the United Kingdom, South Asian immigrants are still not very numerous in Paris, although their presence significantly increased in the 1990s. Compared with the United States, Latin American and Filipino immigrants are extremely few in Paris; by contrast, the Paris region has a sizeable population of Argentine and Chilean exiles who escaped those nations' dictatorships in the 1970s). Middle Eastern immigrants are also relatively few (compared to those of the Maghreb), although there is a sizeable Lebanese community (mostly Christian and affluent), due to the old ties between France and Lebanon, as well as an important Turkish and Kurdish population. Russians are also extremely few in Paris, despite an old tradition of White Russian presence in Paris following the Communist revolution of 1917, and before of anarchist and socialist Russians.

Finally, it should be remembered that the figures given here are for people permanently living in the metropolitan area of Paris. However, Paris is the most visited city in the world, with a massive influx of tourists at any time in the year (over 75 million a year, which is more than the whole population of France). Most of these visitors are foreigners, so that on any day of the year the actual foreign population being present in the metropolitan area of Paris is probably higher than the 19.4% figure given above. This fact is most felt in the center of the city of Paris, where it is possible to walk in some streets where most people encountered are tourists.

Immigrants and their children in départements of Île-de-France (Greater Paris), Insee 2006

According to INSEE, French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies, responsible for the production and analysis of official statistics in France, 20% of people living in the city of Paris are immigrants and 41.3% of people under 20 have at least one immigrant parent. Among the young people under 18, 12.1% are of Maghrebi origin, 9.9% of Subsaharan African origin (not including Blacks from French West Indies) and 4.0% of South European origin. About 35% of people (4 millions) living in Greater Paris, are either immigrant (17%) or born to at least one immigrant parent (18%).

Département	Immigrants			Children under 20 with at least one immigrant parent
	Number	% département	% Ile-de-France	Number	% département	% Ile-de-France
Paris (75)	436'576	20	22.4	162'635	41.3	15.4
Seine-Saint-Denis (93)	394'831	26.5	20.2	234'837	57.1	22.2
Hauts-de-Seine (92)	250'190	16.3	12.8	124'501	34	11.8
Val-de-Marne (94)	234'633	18.1	12	127'701	40	12.1
Val-d’Oise (95)	185'890	16.1	9.5	124'644	38.5	11.8
Yvelines (78)	161'869	11.6	8.3	98'755	26.4	9.3
Essonne (91)	150'980	12.6	7.7	94'003	29.6	8.9
Seine-et-Marne (77)	135'654	10.7	7	90'319	26	8.5
Île-de-France	1'950'623	16.9	100	1'057'394	37.1	100

Reading: 436 576 immigrants live in Paris, representing 20 % of Parisians and 22.4 % of immigrants in Ile-de-France. 162 635 children under 20 with at least one immigrant parent live in Paris, representing 41.3% of the total of children under 20 in Paris and 15.4 % of the total of children under 20 with at least one immigrant parent in Ile-de-France.

See also

• Demographics of France
• List of metropolitan areas by population
• Larger Urban Zones in the European Union
• Largest urban areas of the European Union