This article is from page 15 of the 2012-04-03 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 15 JPG
CLARE’S population boom over the past 20 years has been highlighted by the 2011 Census returns, which reveal the county now enjoys its biggest population since the 1890s.
The returns published by the Central Statistics Office on Thursday last have revealed that there are now 117,196 people in the county, a figure that’s broken down between 58,898 females and 58,298 males.
This statistic means that for the first time in 140 years there are now officially more females than males in county Clare. The last time this was so was in 1871 Census when females were in the majority, when the breakdown was 74,422 to 73,442.
Meanwhile the overall figure of 117,196 represents the first time since the 1901 Census when there 112,334 people in Clare that the county’s population has broken through the 110,000 barrier.
Over the past 20 years Clare’s population has risen by 27,190, while every Census since 1991 has shown an increase in the numbers of people in the county.
Between the 2006 and 2011 Census returns, Clare’s population increased by 6,396, which represents a 5.3 per cent increase, while the average increase across the country is 8.1 per cent.
The percentage increase in population in Clare represents the lowest increase since the 1996 Census when the number of people in the county jumped by 5.46 per cent. The highest percentage increase occurred in 2002 when the county’s population jumped by 9.9 per cent.
However, the headline grabbing statistic is female to male ratio in the county. The number of females in the county grew substantially in the five years between the 2006 and 2011 Census reports. The number of females grew by 4,098, while male numbers only grew by 2,298 in the same period.
In 1926 Clare’s population dipped below the 100,000 for the first time since official records were kept, with the Census of that year showed that there were only 95,064 people in the county.
From there Clare’s population declined in six successive Census reports from 1936 to 1966, before the a record low population of 73,597 was recorded. At four subsequent Cen sus’ the population increased, with a figure of 91,344 returned in the 1986 Census, before the economic recession of the 1980s saw the population decrease to 90,918 by the time of the 1991 Census.
However, in the last 20 years the county has enjoyed a population explosion, with the number of people in the county increasing by 28 per cent. It wasn’t until the 2002 Census that the county’s population topped 100,000 when that year’s Census revealed a return of 103,333.