The largest metropolitan areas in Poland are the Upper Silesian Coal Basin centred on Katowice (3.5 million inhabitants); the capital, Warsaw (3 million); Łódź (1.3 million); Kraków (1.3 million); the “Tricity” of Gdańsk-Sopot-Gdynia in the Vistula delta (1.1 million); Poznań (0.9 million); Wrocław (0.9 million); and Szczecin (0.9 million).
Poland formerly played host to many languages, cultures, and religions. There was a particularly significant Jewish life in Poland prior to the Nazi Holocaust when Poland’s Jewish population, estimated at 3 million, was reduced to about 300,000 survivors. The outcomes of World War II, particularly the westwards shift of Poland’s borders to the area between the Curzon line and the Oder-Neisse line coupled with World War II evacuation and expulsion gave Poland an appearance of homogeneity.
Today 36,983,700 people, or 96.74% of the population considers itself Polish (Census 2002), 471,500 (1.23%) declared another nationality. 774,900 people (2.03%) didn’t declare any nationality. The officially recognized ethnic minorities include: Germans (most in the former Opole Voivodeship), Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Jews and Belarusians. The Polish language, a member of the West Slavic branch of the Slavic languages, functions as the official language of Poland. English and German are the most common second languages studied and spoken.
In recent years Poland’s population has decreased because of an increase in emigration and a sharp drop in the birth rate. In 2006 the census office estimated the total population of Poland at 38,536,869, a slight rise on the 2002 figure of 38,230,080. Since Poland’s accession to the European Union, a significant number of Polish people have moved to work in Western European countries like the United Kingdom and Ireland. Some organisations state people have left primarily due to high unemployment (14.7%) and better opportunities for work abroad. In April 2007 the Polish population of the United Kingdom had risen to approximately 2 million, and estimates predict more than 500,000 Polish people living in Ireland.
A Polish minority is still present in neighbouring countries of Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania, as well as in other countries (see Poles for population numbers). The largest number of ethnic Poles outside of the country can be found in the United States.
