A resources boom and growing immigration from Asia are reshaping Australia's population. Mandarin overtook Italian as the second most popular language spoken at home, after English, figures from the 2011 census published recently showed. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics showed that the resource-rich regions of Western Australia and Queensland both recorded double-digit population growth over the past five years, more than double that of Australia's most populous state, New South Wales, and sharply outstripping the national average of 8.3%. Asians accounted for the biggest jump in immigration to Australia in terms of ethnicity, with Indian and Chinese the fastest-growing groups. The census showed that around one in four of the 21.5 million people surveyed in the census last year was born outside Australia, compared with 22% a decade ago. Of those, a third was born in Asia, a sharp increase from 24% in 2006. Meanwhile, the proportion of European migrants has fallen from more than half of arrivals a decade ago to 40% last year. The U.K. remains the leading country of origin for Australia's overseas-born population at 21%, including more than a quarter of long-standing migrants. Australia's population is becoming more Asian in origin at a time when its economy has grown dependent on countries like China. But the country, which maintains strict immigration regulations, still struggles to attract enough workers for its mining industry, although states rich in resources showed the fastest rates of population growth in the census. Exploding population growth in some areas has also put growing pressure on housing, driving a sharp rise in rents relative to average incomes. The overall national median weekly income rose 24% to 577 Australian dollars (US$586) in 2011, up from A$466 in 2006, while the median household weekly rent rose by almost half to A$285 from A$191, the data showed. In Western Australia the trend was even more pronounced: Weekly rent in the state surged by more than three-quarters to A$300 a week-A$320 in its capital, Perth-while weekly incomes in the state rose around a third to A$662. The largest decreases in migrant populations were among Greeks and Italians, which fell by 33,300 and 16,500 respectively, as low migration levels failed to replenish existing communities, many of whom originally arrived following the devastation wreaked across Europe in World War II. |
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