85,696 residents · Middle East and Asia · Southern Asia · confidence: medium

People born in Afghanistan

85,696 usual residents of England and Wales were born in Afghanistan when the census was taken in March 2021. On the assumptions currently set they pay £9,288 a person a year and cost £14,119, a net −£4,831 — 144th of 163 of the countries on this page. Charging defence and debt interest the other way would make it −£1,498.

Where the figure comes from

The result is not really about Afghanistan. It is about four things this group happens to be, and every one of them is measured rather than assumed.

Age: Mean age 36. 10.4% are under 18 and 4.1% are over State Pension age, against 23.2% and 18.8% of the UK-born. Age drives more of the difference between rows on this page than anything else.
Work: 42.3% of the whole group is in work. Set beside what this group’s age structure alone would predict, that is 0.65 times the national rate — so fewer of them work than their ages would suggest.
Pay: Mean £27,671 and median £24,161 among those in work, built from the occupations this group actually works in and ASHE’s pay distribution for each of them. 80% of them earn enough to pay income tax. HMRC’s own records for people of this nationality imply £28,055, which is 0.97 times the modelled figure. The disagreement is published rather than corrected away, because correcting it would hide that HMRC counts nationality and the census counts birthplace.
Housing and benefits: 36.2% of households headed by someone born in Afghanistan rent from a council or another social landlord, against 16.9% of those headed by someone born in England. No administrative benefit figure describes this group — DWP records nationality, and for this country nationality and birthplace are not the same people — so a regional average of 0.41 stands in.

How much the administrative record can say. The census implies about 26,296 taxpayers born here; HMRC recorded 8,029 of this nationality, 31% of that. Most of this community holds a different passport, so the nationality figures describe a smaller and different group and are not used for it.

Every line

Each figure is per person of this group per year. Hover a line to see the rule that produced it and the source it came from.

What they pay
Line	£ per person per year	Share
VAT and duties	£2,474
Other taxes	£1,937
Income tax	£1,863
National Insurance (employer)	£957
Income tax on pensions, profits and investments	£900
Council tax	£664
National Insurance (employee and self-employed)	£493
Total	£9,288

What they cost
Line	£ per person per year	Share
Defence, debt interest and central government	£3,333
Health	£2,664
Transport, environment, culture and the rest	£2,034
Universal Credit and income support	£1,491
Education	£1,293
Police, courts, prisons and fire	£910
Incapacity and disability benefits	£786
Housing and community	£700
State Pension	£517
Family and children	£257
Other pensioner spending	£122
Unemployment benefits	£12
Total	£14,119

Over a lifetime

The figures above describe this group as it is today, a mix of ages. A different question is what one person contributes across a whole life. Following someone from the age they arrive to the age they die, weighting each year by the chance of being alive to see it and discounting future pounds at 3.5% a year, one person arriving at 23 — this group’s own mean age of arrival — comes to −£107,000 in present value. Their running total never settles above zero: what they contribute while working is undone by what they cost afterwards.

Net present value at the age of arrival, at 3.5%
Arrives at	Present value	Undiscounted	Expected years	Breaks even
20	−£111,000	−£516,000	61.9	never
25	−£106,000	−£494,000	57.0	never
30	−£115,000	−£485,000	52.2	never
40	−£126,000	−£416,000	42.6	never
50	−£147,000	−£351,000	33.3	never
65	−£154,000	−£242,000	20.3	never

A lifetime figure and an annual figure are different kinds of number and must never be added or compared: one is a stock of present value, the other a flow. The calculation holds today’s tax rules and today’s spending fixed for the rest of a life, so it is the present value of today’s rules applied to a whole lifetime, not a forecast. It also uses one life table for everyone, because none is published by country of birth — so the groups that live longest are understated.

1.5% discount 3.5% discount 5.0% discount

Change the assumptions

Defence, debt interest and central government

About £198bn of spending does not rise when one more person arrives, but somebody pays for it. Charging none of it to a new arrival is marginal costing; charging everyone an equal share is average costing. The difference is roughly £3,300 a head and it decides the sign of several countries. Average costing is the default here because it is what the Danish Ministry of Finance does, which is what makes the two sets of figures comparable.

Children born here to a migrant parent

A child born in Britain is UK-born and is counted in the UK-born row. Denmark reports descendants as a category of their own, which its population register supports and the census does not: ONS never asks where a person's parents were born. Turning this on charges the schooling and children's services of the 2.3 million UK-born children living in a migrant-headed household to the parent's country of birth instead. It is a transfer, not a new cost — the UK-born row is credited the same £25bn — and it is one-sided, because the tax paid by the grown-up children of earlier migration stays in the UK-born row where it cannot be identified. It therefore reads worst for the communities settled longest.

How steeply health spending rises with age

The age profile of NHS spending is the model's weakest input: the published curves are behind bot protection and have not yet been obtained, so an interim shape stands in. Flat gives every age the same cost, which makes young populations look expensive; steep makes them look cheap. Move it and see how much of the answer depends on it.

If employment were different

The census counted employment in March 2021, in the third national lockdown. Shifting every group's employment rate by a tenth in each direction shows how much of the result rests on that measurement.

If pay were different

Pay comes from each group's occupations crossed with ASHE's distribution for those occupations, not from a survey of migrants. Shifting it a tenth either way tests how much that join carries.

Employer National Insurance

Counted here as revenue the job produces. Most economists hold that it is borne by the worker in lower wages, in which case it is not extra revenue from that person at all. Switch it off to see the other reading.

Corporation tax, capital gains, stamp duty and the rest

£200bn allocated in proportion to income, which is contestable: corporation tax in particular falls partly on shareholders, many of whom are not UK residents. Leaving it out is the most conservative reading.

Scaling revenue to published receipts

The model computes tax from the statutory schedule over ASHE's earnings distribution, which counts employee jobs rather than people, so it finds about a sixth less income tax than HMRC collected. Scaling each revenue line to its published receipt corrects the level; the same factor applies to every country, so it moves no country past another.

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