Demographics of Paris
[2] The metropolitan or functional area (aire d'attraction) of Paris covers 18,941 km2 (7,313 sq mi) and has 13,064,617 inhabitants (2018).
The principal factors in the process were a significant decline in household size, and a dramatic migration of residents to the suburbs between 1962 and 1975.
Factors in the migration included deindustrialisation, high rent, the gentrification of many inner quarters, the transformation of living space into offices, and greater affluence among working families.
According to Eurostat, the EU statistical agency, in 2012 the Commune of Paris was the most densely populated city in the European Union, with 21,616 people per square kilometre within the city limits (the NUTS-3 statistical area), ahead of Inner London West, which had 10,374 persons per square kilometre.
[6] Its density, excluding the outlying woodland parks of Boulogne and Vincennes, was 24,448 inhabitants per square kilometre (63,320/sq mi) in the 1999 official census, which could be compared only with some Asian megapolises and the New York City borough of Manhattan.
[citation needed] The most sparsely populated quarters are the western and central office and administration-focused arrondissements.
These eight departments form the larger administrative Île-de-France région; most of this region is filled, and overextended in places, by the Paris aire urbaine, which, in 2017, was populated by over 12 million people.
With an estimated total of 12.2 million inhabitants for 2017, the annual population growth rate of the Île-de-France région was between 0.3% and 0.9% over the past 50 years.
[11] By law, French censuses do not ask questions regarding ethnicity or religion, but do gather information concerning one's country of birth.
[15] The first wave of international migration to Paris started as early as 1820, with the arrivals of German peasants fleeing an agricultural crisis in their homeland.
Several waves of immigration followed continually until today: Italians and central European Jews during the 19th century; Russians after the revolution of 1917 and Armenians fleeing genocide in the Ottoman Empire;[16] colonial subjects during World War I and later;[17] Poles between the two world wars; Spaniards, Italians, Portuguese, and North Africans from the 1950s to the 1970s; North African Jews after colonies in that region gained independence; Africans and Asians since then.
[18] The Paris metropolitan region, or aire urbaine, is estimated to be home to some 1.7 million Muslims, who comprise between 10–15 per cent of the area's population.
[19] According to the North American Jewish Data Bank, an estimated 310,000 Jews also live in Paris and the surrounding Île-de-France region, an area with a population of 11.7 million.
[20] According to the National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies, responsible for the production and analysis of official statistics in France, 20 per cent of people living in the city of Paris are immigrants, and 41.3 per cent of people under 20 have at least one immigrant parent.
Western Paris is in close proximity to many international schools and the La Défense area.
Other countries with populations in Paris include Burkina Faso, the Congo, Guinea, Mali, and Senegal.
[28] As of 1990 the majority of Asians living in the Paris area are ethnic Chinese originating from several countries.
