FOI reference: FOI-2024-2421
You asked
Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I request the following:
All documentation or policies explaining how birth registration data is used in national demographic models or economic forecasts.
Evidence of the transfer or sharing of birth registration data with financial institutions or government entities, such as HM Treasury or GAD.
Any analysis or reports that assess the economic or financial value of population data derived from birth registrations.
We said
Thank you for your request.
Unfortunately, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) do not make economic forecasts - that is the role of the Office for Budget responsibility (OBR) who can be contacted here.
Local Authority population estimates are produced using a cohort component method. This is a standard demographic method that uses high quality data sources to inform components of population change. The three major components of population change are natural change, migration, and special populations.
The starting point for producing the estimates is the resident population from 30 June of the previous year. This population is aged on by one year. Births during the 12-month period are added to the population, while deaths during this period are removed according to recorded age, sex, and usual area of residence. Births in England and Wales occurring between 1 July of the previous year and 30 June of the current year are added to the population at age zero, by sex, and allocated to the local authority of usual residence of the mother.
Data on live births by sex are obtained from the Civil Registration System administered by the ONS and are based on births occurring (and then registered) in England and Wales. As registration of births may legally take place up to 42 days after a birth, the data received refer to the date of birth rather than the date of registration. The Civil Registration System captures information on all births in England and Wales. This includes births to mothers who are usually resident elsewhere, but not necessarily those births to mothers who are usually resident in England and Wales that take place elsewhere.
We assume that the number of births for the two groups are similar in number and, on average, balance each other out. In this way, births to non-usually resident mothers are added to the population estimates as a proxy for those births elsewhere to usually resident mothers. We impute local authorities of residence for these births using the distribution of births we know about during the year.
ONS legally share individual level birth registration data with a number of organisations. However, none of these are financial institutions or Government entities. Rather, they are organisations with a health focus such as the Department for Health and Social Care, NHS England, and the UK Health Security Agency.
ONS also provides a bespoke and chargeable civil registration data tabulation service, where a customer can request a bespoke aggregate tabulation of births or deaths data. However, these tables are always published on the ONS website where they can be accessed by the public (not just by the customer), like our main births and deaths statistics which we produce and release on our website, as part of our statutory functions. We would not consider the tables produced via this bespoke service to be "sharing" or transferring the data.
Finally, ONS can provide secure data access (rather than sharing) to its data in its secure data environments (the Secure Research Service and the Integrated Data Service). To be able to access the data in this way, the project must be accredited, as must the researchers - see here for more details www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/whatwedo/statistics/requestingstatistics/secureresearchservice/becomeanaccreditedresearcher. Currently, the Bank of England access the births data in this way for these projects:
- Analysis of Structural Issues of the UK Economy: Corporates, households, and prices
- Homeownership of the Young
The London School of Economics access the data for the following project:
- The impact of recent welfare policies on fertility and birth outcomes in England and Wales
Unfortunately, we do not hold information on any analysis or reports that assess the economic or financial value of population data derived from Birth registrations.