Births - Variation within Scotland
Last Updated: November 2017
In 2016, the crude birth rate for Scotland was 10.1 births per 1,000 population (of both sexes and all ages). An equivalent figure can be calculated for each council area and for each NHS Board area. However, comparing the crude birth rates of different areas could present a misleading picture, because of differences between them in the proportion of the population who are women of child-bearing age, and (in particular) women in the peak child-bearing ages. Therefore, the comparisons that appear below use birth rates which have been standardised for differences in the age/sex-distribution of the population in each area.
Standardised rates which are based on the age/sex-distribution of the population of Scotland as a whole enable comparisons of the birth rates in different parts of Scotland with each other, and with the overall birth rate for Scotland, which are not affected by differences in their populations' age/sex-distributions. It should be noted that these are standardised versions of the overall birth rate (not rates whose denominators are the female populations of child-bearing age), and that the normal year-to-year fluctuations in the numbers of births will mean that areas with small populations may sometimes have rates that are unusually high, or unusually low.
Among the council areas, standardised birth rates in 2016 were highest in the Shetland Islands (13.3 per 1,000 population), Midlothian (13.0) Aberdeenshire (12.2), Scottish Borders (12.0).and Na h-Eileanan Siar (11.9). Standardised birth rates in 2016 were lowest in the City of Edinburgh (7.6 per 1,000 population), Glasgow City (8.4), Aberdeen City (8.5), Stirling (8.8) and Dundee City (9.0). There may be a tendency for the highest birth rates to be in rural council areas, and the lowest birth rates to be in large urban council areas.
Among the NHS Board areas, the standardised birth rates were highest in the Shetland Islands (13.3) and lowest in Lothian (9.0). All the other NHS Board areas had standardised birth rates which were between 9.4 (Greater Glasgow & Clyde) and 12.0 (Borders), and therefore not greatly different from the overall Scottish figure of 10.1 per 1,000 population.
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More Information on Births (National Records of Scotland website)