The estimated population of an area includes all those usually resident there, whatever their nationality. Students are treated as being resident at their term-time address. Members of UK and non-UK armed forces stationed in Scotland are included; UK forces stationed outside Scotland are excluded. Short-term international migrants, who stay for less than 12 months, are excluded.
Population figures relate to 30 June of the year shown and ages relate to age at last birthday.
Although the populations are tabulated in units, this does not imply accuracy to that level. The data are presented in units for the convenience of users wishing to compile non-standard aggregations without encountering rounding problems.
The composition of the NHS Board areas in terms of Council areas is summarised in the table below. Boundary changes, effective from 1 April 2014, mean that the boundaries for all 14 NHS Board areas are now aligned with Council area boundaries. In most NHS Board areas the impact of the boundary changes on the population estimates are small. However, NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde and NHS Lanarkshire are exceptions. Based on unpublished National Records of Scotland mid-2012 population estimates, had the boundary changes taken effect on the 30 June 2012 NHS Greater Glasgow would have lost approximately 6.5 per cent of its population to NHS Lanarkshire and NHS Lanarkshire would have lost 0.3 per cent of its population to NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde. The tables presented in this report show information for the new NHS Board areas for all years.
| NHS Board Area | Council Area |
|---|---|
| Ayrshire & Arran | East Ayrshire, North Ayrshire, South Ayrshire |
| Borders | Scottish Borders |
| Dumfries & Galloway | Dumfries & Galloway |
| Fife | Fife |
| Forth Valley | Clackmannanshire, Falkirk, Stirling |
| Grampian | Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Moray |
| Greater Glasgow & Clyde | East Dunbartonshire, East Renfrewshire, Glasgow City, Inverclyde, Renfrewshire, West Dunbartonshire |
| Highland | Highland, Argyll & Bute |
| Lanarkshire | North Lanarkshire, South Lanarkshire |
| Lothian | East Lothian, City of Edinburgh, Midlothian, West Lothian |
| Orkney | Orkney Islands |
| Shetland | Shetland Islands |
| Tayside | Angus, Dundee City, Perth & Kinross |
| Western Isles | Eilean Siar |
The land areas used to calculate the population density information presented in Table 9 was derived from the latest Standard Area Measurements produced by the Office for National Statistics.
The National Records of Scotland (NRS) website has a guide that describes the methodology used to produce the mid-year population estimates for Scotland. This methodology is similar to that used to produce population estimates in other UK countries. A comparison of data sources and methods used for population estimates across the UK is available from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) website.
Migration is the most difficult component of population change to estimate, as there is no comprehensive system which registers migration in the UK, either moves to or from the rest of the world, or moves within the UK. Estimates of migration have therefore to be based on survey data and the best proxy data that exist.
Migration estimates are derived from the following key sources of data. The National Health Service Central Register (NHSCR) is used to calculate moves between NHS Board areas within the UK, with migration at Council area and below estimated using anonymised data from the Community Health Index (CHI) supplied with the permission of the Scottish Directors of Public Health. The International Passenger Survey (IPS) provides information on moves into and out of Scotland with an origin or destination of outside the UK. In addition to IPS data, additional information is used for asylum seekers. These three main sources are described in more detail in the remainder of this section.
More information on the methodology used to estimate migration can be found in the Migration Methodology section and in the Mid-Year Population Estimates for Scotland Methodology Guide on the NRS website.
The NHSCR system records the movements of patients between NHS Board areas in the UK. Each time a patient transfers to a new NHS doctor in a different NHS Board area, the NHSCR is notified and the patient is then considered to have made a migrant move. Counts of these re-registrations are used as a proxy indicator for moves within the UK.
The CHI holds records of people registered with an NHS doctor in Scotland. The records used in production of the mid-year population estimates contain the postcode of the patient's address, which enables migration to be estimated for Council areas, and for smaller areas. The approach used for estimating Council area-level migration involves matching CHI patient records extracted from a database which reflects the 'live' CHI system on two occasions one year apart.
Currently, migration data derived from the NHSCR is considered to be the most reliable data available at NHS Board level, so estimates from the CHI are controlled to ensure that they are consistent with the NHSCR data for moves across a NHS Board boundary by origin, destination, age and sex.
Due to an improvement in data sources, the accuracy of cross border migration data between Scotland and Northern Ireland was improved from mid-2009. More information on the nature of the improvements is contained in the papers from the May 2010 meeting of the Population and Migration Statistics Committee (PAMS), available on the NRS website. We are continuing to review the process for estimating internal migration, including investigating the use of patients' postcode information held on the NHSCR.
An international migrant is defined by the United Nations (UN) as someone who changes country of residence for 12 months or more. There is no single, all-inclusive system in place to measure all movements of population into and out of the UK or to determine if they meet the definition of a long term migrant. Therefore, it is necessary to use a combination of data from different sources that have different characteristics and attributes in order to produce estimates of international migration. While offering the best data currently available, none of the data sources used is specifically designed to capture information solely on international migration.
National Records of Scotland (NRS) use the Long-Term International Migration (LTIM) estimates (previously referred to as Total International Migration (TIM)) produced by Office for National Statistics (ONS) for the national estimates of international migration to and from Scotland. These are the best estimates of the moves to and from the UK that meet the definition of long term migration.
Three sources of data are used by ONS to compile the LTIM estimates for Scotland:
Fundamental changes were introduced to the IPS sample design at the beginning of 2009 to make the survey more focused on identifying migrants. These changes included a re-organisation of the times and frequency of sampling of travellers, sampling at additional locations including Aberdeen and improvements to the IPS weighting methodology.
Given that the IPS collects information on intentions which may or may not be realised, an adjustment is made to the IPS data for visitor and migrant switchers (people who change their intentions and their migratory status).
The IPS provides an estimate of international migrants into the United Kingdom. The allocation of these migrants to Scotland is based on the LFS. The LFS provides more reliable data on the geographical distribution of immigrants than the destination provided in the IPS as it is based on where migrants actually live rather than on their initial intentions. The outflow of international migrants from Scotland is based directly on the IPS data. More information on the LTIM method can be found on the ONS website.
Comparison of country of birth data from the 2001 Census, the 2011 Census and LTIM estimates of international migration to Scotland from mid-2001 to mid-2011 indicated that much of the 45,100 difference between the 2011 Census and 2001 Census based mid-2011 population estimates was because of an underestimation of international migration to Scotland across the decade. Scotland's international migration time series has been revised for mid-2001 to mid-2011 to reflect this. For more details go to Methods used to revise population estimates for Scotland and its administrative areas for mid-2002 to mid-2010 within the Mid-2002 to Mid-2010 Revision section on the NRS website
International migration flows between Scotland and overseas are allocated to each NHS Board area and given an assumed age and sex distribution using proportions recorded on the NHS Central Register (NHSCR). These proportions are applied to the total LTIM flows for Scotland. In consultation with users, for the 2011 Census based mid-2011 population estimates onwards (and the rebased mid-year population estimates for 2002 to 2010) we have used a new methodology to distribute international migrants to NHS Board areas. For more details go to Paper 5 PAMS 13 (05) from the April 2013 meeting of the Population and Migration Statistics Committee which is available on the NRS website.
For inflows the recorded moves from overseas to Scottish NHS Boards on the NHSCR are used to estimate the proportion of migrants entering each area. NHSCR records hold limited data on international outflows from NHS Boards to overseas, as patients do not reliably de-register with their doctor when moving overseas. International outflows are currently allocated to NHS Board areas based on flows of other groups of migrants which stand as a proxy for overseas out-migrants.
Age and sex distributions of international migrants are obtained from the NHSCR in a similar way, and calculated separately for each NHS Board, with proxy groups again providing the characteristics of out-migrants.
It is acknowledged that NHSCR flows undercount the number of migratory moves, for young men in particular, due to GP registration behaviour in different groups. Compared with LTIM estimates by sex there are fewer men in both the in and out-migrant groups recorded on the NHSCR. A sex-ratio adjustment has been introduced from 2011 which increases the number of male migrants at young adult ages where there is a large majority of women seen in the NHSCR data.
The distribution of migrants to Council areas is based on records from the Community Health Index (CHI), which are made consistent with the NHSCR geographic and age/sex distributions. International in-migrants were allocated using records appearing on the CHI extract where the patient had arrived from overseas. Like the NHSCR, the CHI extract holds limited data on people leaving Scotland for overseas and so international out-migrants were allocated using a combination of in-migrants to Scotland from overseas and migrants leaving Scotland for the rest of the UK.
Work to improve the method used to allocate international out-migrants to NHS Board and Council areas is continuing and further improvements will be considered for future publications.
The NRS website includes a migration section which provides additional tables showing migration estimates associated with mid-year population estimates.
The National Records of Scotland (NRS) have published research papers assessing the quality of the administrative data sources that are used in the production of the mid-year population estimates. For more information go to the Research for the 2021 Census section of the NRS website.
The NRS has data access agreements with the suppliers of the NHS Central Register (NHSCR) and Community Health Index (CHI) data that we use to produce mid-year population estimates. We are in regular contact with both suppliers and we are informed of any data quality issues that may impact upon the mid-year population estimates. Likewise, we quality assure the data we receive and communicate back any issues that arise.
For example, we were informed of data cleaning work that had taken place on the NHSCR between October 2012 and February 2013, and were able to establish that this was having the effect of artificially increasing the apparent number of migrants who arrived in Scotland from the rest of the UK. To allow for this, we made an adjustment to the NHSCR data to exclude the records included in the data as a result of the data cleaning exercise.
Since the early 2000s, and especially since Eastern European countries joined the European Union (EU) in May 2004, migration has played a larger part in Scotland's demographic change than in the previous decade. So it has become more important to have high quality statistics on migration and the population, for policy development and for planning and providing public services. National records of Scotland was part of an inter-departmental effort, led by the Office for National Statistics (ONS), to improve the estimates of migration and migrant populations in the United Kingdom, both nationally and at a local level. The ONS website has more information on the Migration Statistics Improvement Programme including the programme final report.
Although the programme has now finished, work to improve migration statistics is continuing. In Scotland the key focus is on reconciling the mid-year estimates with the 2011 Census results (available on Scotland's Census website). The mid-year population estimates for 2002 to 2010 have been rebased to better reflect these results.
For further information please go to the following publications on the NRS website:
Population Estimates for Scotland Mid-2002 to Mid-2010 revised following the 2011 Census and 2011 Census Reconciliation Report - Population.
As a result of the latter report we reviewed our method for distributing international migrants; affecting local areas and the age and sex profile.
Once 2011 Census data on migration within Scotland becomes available we will be able compare the data with NHSCR flows.
We are also looking at the potential for incorporating new data sources, for example student data from Higher Education Statistics Authority, or Council Tax data, to improve our estimates.
Mid-year population estimates for 2014 will be published in Spring 2015.