1.1 The Office for National Statistics (ONS), on behalf of the Registrars General, prepares population projections for the United Kingdom and its constituent countries.
This paper presents the main results of the latest, 2008-based, projection for Scotland and outlines the fertility, mortality and migration assumptions used in its preparation. Some additional tables showing more detailed figures for Scotland can be found on the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) website (www.nrscotland.gov.uk) whilst full results of the (2008-based) projections can be found on the National Statistics website (www.statistics.gov.uk).
1.2 The results in this paper concentrate on the period up to 2033, although they occasionally refer to up to 75 years ahead and ONS makes available projections up to 2108. However, projections this far ahead become increasingly uncertain.
1.3 As well as producing the main "principal" projection, ONS also produces "variant" projections using alternative plausible assumptions. At the time this paper was written (21 October 2009) ONS had published nine variant projections on the National Statistics website. Additional variants will follow in November 2009. More information on the variant projections is given in Section 7.
1.4 The primary purpose of the projections is to provide an estimate of the future population of Scotland as a common framework for use in national planning in a number of different fields such as education and health.
1.5 The Scottish Government has set a target to match average European (EU15) population growth over the period from 2007 to 2017. More details can be found on the Scotland Performs website at http://www.scotland.gov.uk/About/scotPerforms.