I have served as Registrar General since 2003 and this is my last annual review before I retire. The past eight years have been a time of great change in Scotland’s population.
When I was appointed, Scotland’s population was estimated to be 5,054,800 and had been slowly reducing since 1974. Past trends suggested that the fall in numbers would continue, with the population in 2010 set to fall to 4,991,500. In fact, the estimated population in mid 2010 was 5,222,100 – an increase of over 3% in eight years, and only 18,700 short of the highest-ever population, which was in 1974.
There were two reasons for that remarkable turnaround. Migration was the main cause. From 2004, there was an unexpected and unusual increase in the number of people moving to Scotland – partly as a result of eight East European states joining the European Union and their citizens being given free access to the UK. For the previous 15 years, the number of people moving to Scotland and the number moving out of Scotland had been approximately the same. However, in each of the last few years the number of people coming to Scotland has been higher than the number leaving by an average of 22,800. In 2009-2010, about half of the people who moved to Scotland came from the rest of the UK. The other half came approximately equally from the European Union and from the rest of the world – and about a quarter of those were British citizens returning to live in the UK.
The second, and smaller, reason for the change was the difference between the number of births and deaths. The number of deaths has reduced from 58,472 in 2003 to 53,967 in 2010, while the number of births has risen in the same period from 52,432 to 58,791. So, instead of that ‘natural change’ reducing the population by 6,000, as in 2003, it is now increasing the population by 5,000.
The reduction in the death rate is unsurprising. In the 1980s, the number of deaths each year was between 61,000 and 65,000, in the 1990s (with one exception) it ranged from 59,000 to 62,000, and in the early years of this century it was between 57,000 and 59,000. But the number has fallen more rapidly since then, reaching 53,856 in 2009 (the lowest number since civil registration began in 1855) and 53,967 in 2010. That welcome change is mainly because of large falls in the number of deaths from coronary heart disease and strokes. Deaths from coronary heart disease have been falling for many years – for example, from 18,000 in 1986 to 11,000 in 2003. Since then, there has been a drop of nearly a third in only seven years (to 8,138 in 2010). Similarly, deaths from strokes fell from almost 8,600 in 1986 to fewer than 6,500 in 2003, and then to 4,764 in 2010 − a further drop of more than a quarter.
More surprising has been the change in the number of births. In 1993, 63,000 births were registered – but then the number fell in almost every year until a low of 51,270 in 2002 (the lowest number since the start of civil registration in 1855). While there was a rise to 52,432 in 2003, that was a small increase compared with the growth over five years to the most recent peak of 60,041 in 2008. Numbers dropped slightly in the next two years – but the total of 58,791 for 2010 is still 6,359 (12%) more than in 2003. Again, that was partly a result of the East European states joining the EU in 2004. In 2003, there were 1,025 births in Scotland registered to mothers who had been born in countries (not including the UK) which are part of the EU today. In 2010, mothers born in these same EU countries registered 3,494 births – more than three times the number seven years before. Most of the increase was due to women who had been born in Poland − they gave birth in Scotland to 29 babies in 2003 and 1,727 in 2010. Mothers from countries which have joined the EU since 2003 gave birth to only 4% (one in 25) of babies born in Scotland. But that accounted for around one in three of the increase in births between 2003 and 2010.
There were 30,757 marriages in 2003. Since then, the numbers have tended to fall (although the figure for 2004 was the highest since 1993), reaching 27,524 in 2009 – the lowest level since Victorian times. While there was an increase to 28,480 in 2010, that is still the second lowest figure for well over 100 years and is 7% less than in 2003. There has also been a clear increase in the proportion of children born to unmarried parents. They accounted for around 5% to 10% of all births registered each year from the mid 1850s to the mid 1970s, but there has been a marked rise since then – for instance to 15% in 1983, 31% in 1993 and 46% in 2003. There have been further increases since 2003, and 2008 was the first year in which more than half of all babies registered in Scotland had unmarried parents. However, with hardly any change in the last three years (50.1% for 2008, 50.3% for 2009 and 50.2% for 2010), it may be that the upward trend has ended. And it is important to note that most births are registered by both parents. In 2010, only 5.3% of births were registered in just the mother's name − less than the 6.3% in 2003 and the lowest rate since 1981.
The first civil partnership in Scotland was registered on 20 December 2005. During 2006, the first full year, just over 1,000 civil partnerships were registered. Since then, the number has been lower, presumably because many long-standing relationships were registered as civil partnerships in the first year. The figure for 2010 was 465, slightly fewer than in 2009. The Civil Partnership Act 2004 allows civil partnerships to be dissolved in the same way as marriages can be ended by divorce. The first dissolution of a civil partnership in Scotland was in 2007 and, in 2010, 34 civil partnerships were dissolved.
Life expectancy in Scotland has steadily increased in recent years. For babies born around 2003 the life expectancy was 73.8 years for boys, and 79.1 years for girls. This was 9 or 10 years more than for children born 50 years before. That trend has continued, with the average life expectancy for babies born around 2009 being 75.8 years for boys, and 80.3 years for girls. That steady progress is cause for celebration − and the traditional gap between male and female life expectancy has narrowed from 5.3 years in 2003 to 4.5 years in 2009. But little or no progress has been made on two major counts. First, there are still big differences in life expectancy across Scotland, with men in the council area with the highest life expectancy expected to live for 7.2 years longer than those in the council area with the lowest life expectancy (the equivalent figure for women is 5.6 years). For people born around 2003, the difference between the highest and lowest council areas was 7.7 years for men and 4.4 years for women – so the gap has widened for women and narrowed only a little for men.
Second, Scottish men and women continue to have relatively low life expectancy at birth compared with much of the European Union. In 2003, life expectancy at birth for Scottish men was estimated to be one year lower than the EU (25 states) average and for women it was almost two years lower. There has been little change in these figures in the seven years since then.
The number of households in Scotland has steadily increased. The number in mid 2010 (2,357,424) was almost 6% higher than in mid 2003 – partly because of the increase in Scotland’s population, but mostly because more people (especially elderly people) are living alone and the size of the average household is getting smaller. However, the rate of growth in the number of households has slowed in the past three years. Between 2001 and 2008, the number of households in Scotland rose by an average of 19,600 each year, while in 2009 and 2010 the increases were only 12,800 and 12,100 respectively.
So, interesting things have been happening to Scotland’s population over the past few years. Trends are changing, for reasons which are not always clear. The role of the researcher in reviewing what has happened, and trying to identify the causes and future trends, has become more important. When I became Registrar General, there was little research on Scotland’s population. Joint working with the Scottish Government, the Economic and Social Research Council and others has led to new research efforts. In 2009, the Centre for Population Change was created, involving the University of Southampton and a partnership of Scottish universities led by St Andrews. We are already seeing results from the new centre, and chapter 10 in this report summarises some of the centre’s recent findings. The contribution of the academic community is particularly helpful as we look to future population changes in Scotland.
My main task over the past year has been to run Scotland’s 2011 Census. Thanks to the efforts of a great many people − my staff, our contractors and the small army of enumerators who collected the information from every part of Scotland – the census was a great success, with a response rate which appears to have been higher than in the last census, 10 years ago. The statistics from the 2011 Census will be published next year and will cast new light on the characteristics of Scotland’s changing population.