The population of Australia, the history of the settlement of the country.

Today, the majority of the Australian population are descendants of immigrants who arrived in this country in the 19th and 20th centuries, mainly from Scotland, England and Ireland.

The indigenous population of Australia is the aborigines of Australia, the aborigines of Tasmania and the Torres Strait Islanders. These three groups differ in appearance and there are cultural differences between them.

Natives of the British Isles began to settle Australia in 1788. Then on the east coast, in place of the current Sydney, the first consignment of exiles was landed, and the first settlement of Port Jackson was founded. Voluntary immigrants from England began to arrive here only in the 1820s, when sheep breeding began to develop in the country. When gold was discovered in the country, the population of Australia at the expense of immigrants from England and some other countries grew almost threefold from 1851 to 1861. It reached 1 million people.

For 60 years, from 1839 to 1900, the population of Australia grew by more than 18 thousand Germans, who settled in the south of the country; By 1890 it was the second ethnic group of the continent after the British. Among them were Lutherans who were persecuted, political and economic refugees, for example, who left Germany after the 1848 revolution.

Today, the population of Australia is 21.875 million people, with an average density of 2.8 people. On 1 sq.km.

All Australian colonies formed a federation in 1900. In the first years of the twentieth century, Australia's national economy was strengthened, which led to the further consolidation of the nation.

After World War II, the government of the country announced an ambitious program to stimulate immigration, resulting in the population of Australia has more than doubled. As a result, in 2001, 27.4% of the continent's population consisted of people who were born abroad. The largest ethnic groups making up the population of Australia are the British and Italians, the Irish, the New Zealanders, the Netherlands and the Greeks, the Germans, the Vietnamese, the Yugoslavs and the Chinese.

In those years, the autochthonous population included, considering the inhabitants of the Torres Strait islands, which are of Melanesian origin, about 400 thousand people. Aboriginal Australians are characterized by higher levels of crime and unemployment, lower levels of education and shorter life expectancy: they live 17 years less than the rest of the country's population.

For the population of Australia, as for other developed countries, there is a demographic shift towards older people, the number of pensioners has increased and the proportion of working-age people has decreased.

English is the official language of the country. There is a special option known as Australian English. Approximately 80% of the population use English for home communication as the only language. Besides him, 2.1% of the population speak Chinese at home, 1.9% in Italian and 1.4 - in Greek. Very many immigrants speak two languages. In the languages of the Australian aborigines, only 50,000 people are spoken, as a main thing, which is 0.02% of the population. The languages of the indigenous population are gradually disappearing: to date, only about 70 of the 200 languages remain.