It is a great pleasure to introduce my first annual report as Chief Executive of the National Records of Scotland, a post which gives me the privilege of holding the key roles of Registrar General and Keeper of the Records of Scotland. As Registrar General, I have the honour to publish this, the 158th edition of the Registrar General's Annual Review.
In the past year the National Records of Scotland has published the first set of data from Scotland's 2011 Census. In December 2012 we published Release 1A of the census results. This was followed by Release 1B in March 2013, Release 1C in July and August 2013 and Release 2A in September 2013. These statistics estimated that the usually resident population of Scotland in 2011 was just under 5.3 million and provided more detailed information by council and NHS Board areas. Further releases are planned during 2013-14 and will demonstrate the richness of the data collected in the census. Results can be found on the Scotland's Census website.
Census statistics not only provide a valuable snapshot of information at a fixed point in time, they also form an important backbone of many of our ongoing publications including Population Estimates and Population and Household Projections.
In 2012, Scotland's population reached an all-time high. We estimate that on 30 June 2012 it was 5,313,600 (based on rolled forward 2011 Census estimates), an increase of 0.3% (13,700 people) on the previous year. This increase has been caused by more births than deaths and positive net in-migration (number of people moving to Scotland minus number of people leaving Scotland).
Across Scotland, a small population increase at the national level means varied results across council areas. Aberdeen City and the City of Edinburgh saw the greatest percentage increases between 2011 and 2012 with 1.1% and 1.0% respectively. The council area with the greatest decrease in population was Argyll & Bute where the population declined by 2,030 (-2.3%); most of this fall was due to changes in Armed Forces personnel.
The population also continues to age so that the proportion of people aged 65 and over is now the same as the proportion of those under 16 (17%).
Life expectancy in Scotland has improved significantly in the past 25 years. People born today can expect to live to 80.6 for women and 76.1 for men. However, these figures are still well below most of the other European Union (EU) countries.
The number of households is also increasing partly as a result of the ageing population and also because more people are living alone or in smaller households. This increase though is at its lowest level in ten years.
Our latest projections, based on estimates from the 2001 Census suggest that Scotland's population will go on rising, to 5.76 million by 2035, and to age significantly, with the number of people aged 65 or over rising by 63% in the same period. We also expect the number of households to rise from 2.37 million today, to 2.89 million by 2035.
In 2012 there was a slight drop in the number of births, to 58,027, which is 1.0% fewer than in 2011. This is the fourth fall after six consecutive annual increases in the number of births. Just over a half of babies were born to unmarried parents, but the majority of those were registered to both parents (only 5.2% of births were registered solely in the mother's name). Among mothers giving birth here, 85% of those mothers were born in the UK, including 76% born in Scotland.
The number of deaths in 2012 rose by 2.4% to 54,937. However, 2011 had the lowest total recorded since the start of civil registration in 1855. The four main causes of death were cancer (29% of deaths), coronary heart disease (14% of deaths), diseases of the respiratory system (13% of deaths) and strokes (8% of deaths). The total number of deaths from the so-called 'three big killers' (cancer, coronary heart disease and stroke) has reduced from 65% of all deaths during 1980-82 to 51% in 2012.
In 2011-12, migration (people moving to and from Scotland) accounted for the biggest part of Scotland's population increase. More people came here than left but the net migration of 12,700 is the lowest estimate since 2003-04. In 2012, 45,100 people came to Scotland from the rest of the UK and 35,900 came from overseas. In the same period, 42,100 people left Scotland for other parts of the UK and 26,200 went abroad. Most of the people moving to and from Scotland were in the 16 to 34 age group.
There were 30,534 marriages registered in Scotland last year. Tourist marriages, where neither bride nor groom lived in Scotland, remain popular, accounting for nearly a quarter of these (24%). Almost half (49%) of the 'tourism' marriages in 2012 were at Gretna. The average age of grooms who were bachelors has risen from 31.0 in 2002 to 32.9 in 2012; similar figures for brides who were spinsters are 29.1 in 2002 and 31.0 in 2012. The number of civil partnerships last year also rose for the 2nd year in a row with 574 registrations. Of these couples, rather more were female than male, with 317 female couples and 257 male couples.
This report also includes a report on the registration system which has been used since 1855. Today a network of around 700 local-authority registrars across the country record births, marriages, civil partnerships and deaths, and provide around 150,000 records each year to the central databases in Edinburgh. These records are one of the main sources for many of our calculations in this report.
The information, trends and statistics in this report include indications of the potential for some significant changes in the future structure of Scotland's population, particularly in terms of its age profile and living arrangements, which will be highly pertinent to policy makers and service providers.