Data from the register-based population and housing census of 2021 reveal that 72.5% of Estonia’s population is made up of native people, i.e. persons with at least one parent and grandparent born in Estonia. At the time of the previous census, the share of the native populace was 75.3%, which means that the proportion of natives in the population has decreased by 2.8 percentage points, while the share of the foreign-origin population who consider themselves ethnic Estonians has increased.

According to the results of the register-based population and housing census of 2021, there are 341,995 families in Estonia, of which almost half, or 49%, are two-member families. Compared with the previous census, there are fewer families, but the number of people living in them has risen. 154,625 families (or 45%) are raising minor children and 16% of the population lives alone.

Censuses introduce new terms that might be unfamiliar for most people, such as ‘household’, ‘family nucleus’, ‘partner’, and even such a peculiar concept as ‘non-family household’. What do all these terms mean and what is their purpose?

During the population and housing census, information on the highest level of education attained by inhabitants of Estonia was also gathered. Collected data revealed that the educational attainment of the population continues to rise. The level of education of foreigners living in here has also increased significantly. Below we will take a closer look at the educational attainment of the native Estonian- and Russian-speaking population as well as that of other mother tongue speakers and see how it has changed since the previous censuses.