Number of foreign origin children doubles in a decade

A total of 81,000 or 7.5 per cent of all underage children were of foreign background at the end of 2016, according to Statistics Finland.

The number of underage children with foreign background has grown by nearly seven thousand compared to the 2015. In ten years, the number of children with foreign background has doubled.

Until 2003, there were more children with foreign background in the first generation than in the second generation, but in the following year there were slightly more children with foreign background in the second generation, 51 per cent.

At the end of 2016, the share of children with foreign background in the second generation among all children with foreign background was 60 per cent. The relative share has remained unchanged since 2009, which means that the number of children with foreign background in the first generation in the population increased in relative terms at the same rate as the number of children with foreign background in the second generation.

Forty-four per cent of underage children with foreign background were under school age. Although the number of under school-age children with foreign background has grown from 21,000 to 36,000, the share has remained almost unchanged since 2011.