Interpreting the new UAE population data

Posted on 07 October 2009 with no comments from readers

Government statistics can be hard to understand. I spent seven years writing about the UK construction industry official statistics and always smelt a rat. Only when I left my job were the figures revised down by 30 per cent and nobody said a thing.

But I have been puzzling over the new data from a new official UAE government study of the population of the emirates. In short, it does not seem to add up, or the Emirati population is rather smaller than previously stated.

Official data

This certainly has the credentials of a major study with the participation of the Department of Naturalisation and Residency, the Ministry of Interior and the Ministry of Labour, and additional data from the new Emirates Identity Authority.

Indians comprise 1.75 million of the population and are therefore the largest segment followed by Pakistanis at 1.25 million and Bangladeshis at 500,000, so almost 60 per cent of the UAE population comes from the Indian subcontinent.

Then there are ‘other Asian communities’, namely residents from nations including China, The Philippines, Thailand, Korea, Afghanistan and Iran who total around one million. Finally there is a broad category of 500,000 ‘Western expatriates’ hailing from Europe, Australia, Northern Africa, Africa and Latin America.

That brings us to a grand total of five million out of the six million total that the new study proclaims to be the true population of the UAE, up by 1.9 million since the 2005 census.

That leaves the population of UAE nationals and other Arab nationals at one million. Now in the 2005 census the number claimed for UAE nationals alone was 800,000, or 20 per cent of the UAE population.

Even including other Arab nationals with the Emiratis the percentage is now given at around 17 per cent. It would therefore appear that the number of Emiratis has been revised downwards in the new population data.

We can only guess at the true percentage of UAE citizens as the actual population figure for Emiratis is not stated. But of course it is impossible to increase the number of Emiratis as fast as the number of expatriates.

An almost 50 per cent growth in the total population of the UAE just has to mean a dilution of the Emiratis – to around 13 per cent using the 2005 population figure which now appears overstated, perhaps by a factor of two.

Adding up

Perhaps my mathematics is faulty but adding up has always been one of the few statistical skills that I can manage reasonably well. If anybody would care to correct my analysis I remain open to criticism and the comment box is available.

Population data is of course enormously useful to marketing professionals and tells a great deal about the demographic structure of a country. Getting it right, or closer to the truth is always going to be useful. It also helps government departments greatly in getting their planning right.

Hopefully then this new study can be regarded as definitive and a major reference for the UAE, and any future revisions would also be welcomed.