Introduction


This interactive visualisation shows the projected population for Scottish Council areas from 2018 to 2043. The projected change can be broken down by age and gender and comparisons can be made between areas.

As well as the council area projections shown in this visualisation, Population projections have been prepared for NHS Boards areas, Strategic Development Plan (SDP) areas and National Park areas of Scotland. More information on these areas is available in the Sub-national population projections section of the NRS website.

As well as producing the main principal projection, variant projections using alternative plausible assumptions have also been produced. Variant projections give an idea of the uncertainty around projections, and show what might be expected to happen under different plausible assumptions about fertility, mortality and migration.

Total population: compare variants

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Use the Delete or Backspace key to remove variants from selection.


Total population: compare areas

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Population profile: compare years

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Population profile: compare variants

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Change by age group

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More information


Population projections are calculations showing what may happen to the population under certain assumptions about future fertility , mortality and migration . The principal projection is the main figure. Variant projections are produced to give an indication of the inherent uncertainty of demographic behaviour.

As well as the principal assumptions, high and low assumptions are prepared for each of the components of population change (fertility, life expectancy and net migration). These are used to generate what are referred to as the standard variants (High fertility, Low fertility, High life expectancy, Low life expectancy, High migration, Low migration).

A special case scenario that assumes zero outwith Scotland migration has also been produced. This allows the potential impact of migration on the population to be explored by comparing this variant with others.

More information about the projections, their uses and their limitations can be found on the Sub-national population projections page of the NRS website.


A similar visualisation allowing comparisons of the projections for Scotland and the UK is available at National population projections visualisation .



More information

Data: Projected population of Scottish Areas, 2018-based (xlsx)

Publication: Projected population of Scottish Areas, 2018-based


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