The Muggle-Born Population

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

In some interview, J.K. Rowling apparently said that Britain's wizarding population is roughly divided into 25% muggle-born, 50% half-blood, and 25% pureblood. However, while JKR may have said that 25% of witches and wizards are muggle-born, this is not what she has actually shown in canon.

In Harry's year at Hogwarts, there are only two confirmed muggle-born students in canon: Hermione Granger and Justin Finch-Fletchley. JKR's early class list also shows Hannah Abbott and Terry Boot as muggle-borns, but she apparently later either forgot this or changed her mind, for we learn in DH that some of Hannah's family is buried in a wizarding cemetery, and Terry was able to attend Hogwarts when Voldemort was in control. JKR originally imagined Harry's class as having 40 students, but only 30 students are ever mentioned in canon, and only 25 are mentioned elsewhere besides the sorting ceremony. 2 out of 40 students would mean that 5% of the class is definitely muggle-born. 2 out of 30 would mean that 6.66% is muggle-born. 2 out of 25 would make 8% of the class muggle-born. Any of these percentages is much lower than 25%.

(Note: Apparently I can't count, so I've had to change these percentages a few times. Hopefully they're correct now.)

Furthermore, (as far as I can remember) we only meet 3 other muggle-born students at Hogwarts: Penelope Clearwater and the two Creevey Brothers. And we only know of three muggle-borns from the previous generation: Lily Evans, Ted Tonks, and Dirk Cresswell. Again, these numbers suggest that the percentage of wizards and witches who are muggle-born is much lower than 25%

ETA: Oryx reminded me Add Mary McDonalds and the Mary who was on trial during the trio's Ministry invasion (though the two may be the same person, under her maiden and married names).

Another sign of a low percentage of muggle-borns is the WW's ignorance of muggle culture and technology. If muggle-borns were really 25% of the wizarding population, I believe that they would have had significantly more influence on wizarding culture. Wizards would have assimilated and adapted more muggle sports, muggle board games, film, television, etc.

The data I used for these calculations can be found here: https://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?hl=en&hl=en&key=0Asq6Ul6gdxBCdDlMRHoxU0NVaHA5SXQtQzRiRFI0Smc&output=html If the blood status is in parentheses, that means it was shown that way in JKR's notes, but unverified or contradicted in canon.

Comments

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

Rowling seems to have started out intending to have a higher representation of students who were not from wizarding backgrounds, and got too tightly wrapped up in the story to look beyond Harry. After all, in her mind, one third of all the characters we actually pay attention to are muggle-born.

But early on in PS/SS there is a comment made in passing that in the brief period that Harry was adjusting to Hogwarts he noticed that "rather a lot" of the students were Muggle-born.

Rowling seems to have forgotten about that by the time she got solidly into the series, however. She even forgot that the Creevy brothers were supposedly Muggle-born. Since she has Minerva chivvying one of them out of the castle in the evacuation, and Colin was probably of age by that end of the year, so it was a lot more likely to be Dennis.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

If 25% of the students at Hogwarts in the 90's truly were muggle-born, then I have to guess that this was a fairly recent development in wizarding society, and it's almost understandable that the purebloods were concerned.

For, if the ratio of muggle-born to other magicals has been 1:3 for several generations, then that means that the total wizarding population has grown by 33% every generation, or about every 20-25 years.

In contrast, the UK population has grown by less than 20% in the last fifty years.

(I used to know enough math to be able to compare growth rates... sigh).

[jodel-from-aol.livejournal.com]

I've got an essay about the rise of Muggleborns.

Of course I was arguing from a base point that for about a century after Wizarding Seclusion was imposed Muggle-borns had *not* been being brought into the ww. I'm no longer sure that that could have been the case.

But it tries to play off of the growth of recorded British population in general and comes to the rough conclusion that it would have taken some 125 years or so for the Muggle-born sector of the population to build up to a total of 25% of the wizarding population in general. And it was that build up which had the Pureblood faction's knickers in a twist. They really were losing ground in comparison with a predominantly halfblood population and that the Muggle-borns were gaining ground on them as well, was simply too much.

But my data is probably faulty, since I was using the televised information as a base point.

[snapes-witch.livejournal.com]

JKR's admitted that she hasn't re-read the books, but what about those detailed notes? Doesn't she check those either?

[oryx_leucoryx]

Well, when asked about the Amazing Vanishing Gryffindor Girls she said she'd have to dig up that notebook. Looks like the notes are in some boxes somewhere.

[danajsparks.livejournal.com]

Sorry, scrap what I said above. I wasn't taking fertility rates into account.