Population

Our population statistics pages describe the demographic characteristics of Scotland’s population.

Stats at a Glance
Key statistical trends: Council Area Profiles; High Level Summaries; and Registrar General’s Annual Report.

Population Estimates
This section contains the main publication of the Mid-Year Population Estimates for Scotland and its Administrative areas. It also contains a range of other population statistics. These additional estimates fall into two broad categories; Special Area Population Estimates and Estimates of Special Populations.

Population Projections
The Population Projections section contains the latest and previous versions of Projected Population of Scotland, Population Projections for Scottish Areas as well as Population Projections for Scotland’s Strategic Development Plan Areas and National Parks.

Mid-year population estimates – age distribution error – corrected for mid 2012, 2013 and 2014

We became aware of errors in the mid-year population estimates for 2002 to 2014 because of an issue with an input data set used in the calculation of the mid-year estimates, as well as minor unrelated processing errors. The errors had no effect on the total population of Scotland and the 2011 mid-year population estimates were not affected. The error in the 2002 to 2010 population estimates was partly resolved by the retrospective revisions made to these estimates as a result of the 2011 Census and in conjunction with our users we decided not to make any changes to these years. The mid-year population estimates for 2012, 2013 and 2014 have now been corrected. More information on the impact of the errors can be found on the Corrected tables for mid-2012, mid-2013 and mid-2014 page on this website.

Please contact our Statistics Customer Services if you need any further information.
E-mail: statisticscustomerservices@nrscotland.gov.uk