Population statistics newsletter

Office for National Statistics sent this bulletin at 15-02-2024 12:57 PM GMT

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Population statistics newsletter

15 February 2024

Latest news and updates about our population, migration, census, and transformation towards admin-based statistics

User needs from Population Projections

2022-based national population projections, subnational population projections and household projections are due for release at the end of 2024 and in 2025.

To help us prepare for the new projections, we’re seeking feedback from users on your output needs from these releases.

You can find more information about this user engagement and feed back to us by 12 March on our engagement platform.

Our projections team are also hosting an online event on 20 February, which is an opportunity to discuss the engagement and ask any questions. Register now via Eventbrite.

Complete the Populations Projections feedback survey

Migration statistics system webinar

We are launching our annual Migration statistics system webinar to provide updates and answer questions relating to long-term international migration statistics.

Attend the first event on the 20 March for discussion of the methods used to produce provisional and updated net migration estimates, plans for the future and assumption setting process amongst other topics.

Register now for the Migration statistics system webinar

Feedback on our marital status and living arrangements publications

As part of our review of publications, we are seeking feedback from users on any needs that we are not currently meeting.

We encourage users to provide feedback and responses on the tables that are the most useful. You can do this in two ways, either via the data tables, or by emailing the Population Statistics team with your comments.

Recent releases

Travel and tourism

On 24 January we published new figures on overseas travel and tourism in quarter 3 (July to September) 2023 using provisional passenger traffic data. These include:

visits to the UK by overseas residents
spending by overseas residents during their visits to the UK
visits abroad made by UK residents
how much UK residents spent while abroad.

Accompanying the bulletin, the ONS has also published a dataset on travel to and from the UK, with detail on travellers by age, sex, trip purpose, length of their trip, and spending.

Marital status and living arrangements

On 25 January we published annual population estimates by marital status and living arrangements. The release includes estimates of people who are married, civil partnered, divorced or widowed, cohabiting (not in a marriage or civil partnership).

National population projections

On 30 January we published 2021-based interim national population projections. This release includes the potential future population size of the UK. Population projections for the UK are based on assumptions about future births, deaths, and long-term net international migration.

This release was an interim projection that used an updated assumption about future levels of international migration. These statistics are widely used in planning, for example, fiscal projections, health, education, and pensions.

A full set of projections using an update to all assumptions and including variant scenarios will be published later in the year.

There are many reasons for wanting to know the size of the future population of the UK. But looking into the future is challenging. As James Robards explains in our National Statistical blog, population projections take into account current and past trends, and as these change, we adjust the assumptions used in projections accordingly.

Childbearing for women born in different years

On 1 Feb we published annual data on the changing size of families over time, comparing the number of children women have had across generations. The release includes comparisons of average number of children, proportion of women to have had children, distribution of women by number of children, age specific fertility rates.