ONS population statistics newsletter: winter 2018

The 2016-based population projections show that over the period between mid-2016 and mid-2026, the population of the UK is projected to grow from 65.6 million to 69.2 million, reaching 70 million by mid-2029. In particular, England is projected to grow more quickly than the other UK nations.

Of this projected growth, 54% is directly from net international migration. The other 46% is due to a projected higher number of births than deaths.

The latest National Population Projections data (published 26 October 2017) are based on the mid-2016 population estimates and a new set of underlying assumptions about future fertility, mortality and migration.

The assumptions that are used in calculating these projections are reviewed and updated prior to each publication. The latest projections suggest slower growth than the previous (2014-based) projections because of lower assumptions about future levels of fertility and international migration; and an assumption of a slower rate of increase in life expectancy.

Our interactive population pyramid allows you to see the effect of different assumptions on the projected population size, age and sex structure.

The 2016-based subnational population projections are scheduled to be released in May or June this year. On 19 January 2018, we launched a five-week engagement exercise with local area users – local authorities, county councils, combined authorities and clinical commissioning groups. Although the exercise is intended for those groups, the engagement paper may be of wider interest as it provides information on changes to source data and methods.

The Past and projected data from the period and cohort life tables, 2016-based, UK: 1981 to 2066 (released 1 December 2017), which provides projected life expectancy, probability of dying and numbers of survivors, shows that period life expectancy at birth in the UK is projected to reach 88.9 years for females and 86.4 years for males in 2066. This is a projected increase of 6 years for females and 7.2 years for males over the 50-year projection period from 82.9 years for females and 79.2 years for males in 2016.

Want to know how long you can expect to live? See our interactive life expectancy calculator:

How long can you expect to live? (Section 4)

“Women born in 1971 who completed their childbearing in 2016 had an average 1.90 children per woman, fewer than their mothers' generation (born 1944) who had 2.21 children and the lowest level on record. Childlessness was higher for the 1971 cohort (18%) than for the 1944 cohort (11%), which is one of the main drivers of falling completed family sizes by the end of childbearing.”

Emily Knipe, Population Statistics Division, Office for National Statistics

You can find more information in our latest Childbearing for women born in different years, England and Wales publication (released 24 November 2017), which highlights the changing composition of families over time, comparing women of the same age and the children they had.

Some new facts about families in the UK have been published:

• young males were more likely to be living with their parents than young females; around 32% of males aged 20 to 34 years were living with their parents compared with 20% of females aged 20 to 34 years in 2017

• in 2017, there were 19.0 million families in the UK, a 15% increase from 16.6 million in 1996

• in the UK, there were 27.2 million households in 2017, resulting in an average household size of 2.4

These are some of the facts from our latest annual Families and Households bulletin (released 8 November 2017) that covers trends in living arrangements (with and without dependent children), people living alone and people in shared accommodation, broken down by size and type of household from 1996 to 2017.

In 2017, the most common family type in the UK was the married or civil partner couple family (12.9 million families). Opposite-sex couples were most likely to be in married couple families whereas same-sex couples were most likely to be in cohabiting couple families. This is likely to be because civil partnerships and marriages between same-sex couples in particular, are relatively new legal union statuses.

The first full year of data since the EU referendum vote in 2016 shows a decrease in the number of people coming to live in the UK and an increase in the number leaving, resulting in a fall in net migration of 106,000. Over three-quarters of the fall in net migration was accounted for by EU citizens. However, despite this decrease we must remember that, overall, more people are still coming to live in the UK than are leaving and therefore net migration is adding to the UK population.

These figures were part of the Migration Statistics Quarterly Report: November 2017, published on 30 November 2017, covering provisional long-term international migration (LTIM) data for year-ending June 2017.

This most recent release was accompanied by the publication of our final LTIM tables for 2016. You can find all of these data and more in our International migration – table of contents.

You might also want to see an additional article showing how migration has changed since the Brexit vote in six charts. The next MSQR is due for publication on 22 February 2018.

On 6 February 2018, we published an article, Labour in the agriculture industry, UK: February 2018, looking at how the available data on agricultural workers (from the Office for National Statistics Labour Force Survey data, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs June Survey data, National Farmers' Union Supply of Seasonal Labour Survey and British Growers Association Annual Labour Survey) can be used to understand labour in the agricultural industry. The difficulty of estimating seasonal workers is an important theme. The article also looks at what next steps are planned to help improve data on this topic.

We are revising the methodology behind the annual mid-year population estimates. A back-series incorporating the revised methods for mid-2012 to mid-2016 will be published in March 2018.

The changes are:

• the local authority distribution of International Population Survey (IPS) emigration estimates will be modelled in a similar way, but with additional data-sources used and two additional changes to improve the accuracy of the model

• for mid-year 2015 and 2016 population estimates, the distribution of international in-migrants at local authority level could not be calculated as usual, this was because one of the administrative sources used in the calculations (the Migrant Worker Scan, MWS) was unavailable in 2015 and 2016; consequently, the mid-2015 and mid-2016 estimates (of subnational international immigration) were based on the average of the local authority distribution of international in-migrants used in the previous three years, this was in line with our commitment to use the best available data sources at the time of production; the MWS data for mid-2015 and 2016 are now available and we are revising our estimates as a result

• a new method to better account for the movements of the dependants of foreign armed forces personnel has been introduced, leading to improvements in age and sex distributions, particularly children and women in Forest Heath and other local authorities containing or neighbouring US Air Force (USAF) bases

Further details of the proposed changes are provided in the Mid-year population estimates methodology update paper.

Data tables, commentary and analysis tools will be made available with the release, to explain the impact of the changes.

We are planning the following releases to take account of these changes:

• mid-2012 to mid-2016 estimates and an explanation of the impact in spring 2018

• 2016-based subnational population projections taking full account of the changes in the back-series in May 2018

• mid-2017 population estimates using the updated methods in June 2018

• mid-2017 small area population estimates and a back series covering 2012 to 2016 in autumn 2018

Please contact us by emailing pop.info@ons.gov.uk if you wish to receive additional updates before the publication of the back-series, or if you have any additional queries.

On 26 October 2017, we published the Small area population estimates in England and Wales: mid-2016 (commonly referred to as “SAPE”). These annual estimates break down the national population estimates into small geographical areas such as Super Output Areas and health geographies.

Some main points from this year’s publication include:

• in mid-2016, there were 34,753 lower layer Super Output Areas (LSOAs) in England and Wales with a mean population of 1,680 and 7,201 middle layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs) with a mean population of 8,107

• there were 207 clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) in England with a mean population size of 266,995 in mid-2016

• the 573 Westminster Parliamentary constituencies in England and Wales had a mean population of 101,887 in mid-2016

We recently released an update on testing new questions and topics for the 2021 Census. This includes an update on testing the potential inclusion of questions on gender identity and sexual orientation. The report follows up on work from the previous 2021 topic consultation, discussing the results of question design, public acceptability testing and testing the impact of these potential questions on census response rates. Further testing is planned to refine the question design and inform recommendations about the inclusion of such questions in the 2021 Census.

An update on our research into improving our standard population statistics was published on 5 February 2018.

Stakeholder events are planned in April to provide users with more information about the back series and subnational population projections, but also about the latest developments in migration and ageing. Although the order of these events is yet to be confirmed, we are expecting events to take place on 17 April (Cardiff), 19 April (London), 24 April (Newcastle), 25 April (Manchester) and 26 April (Birmingham).

For more information please contact us at pop.info@ons.gov.uk.

We are planning to release the following in February and March:

• Migration Statistics Quarterly Report (MSQR): February 2018

• Electoral Statistics for UK: 2017

• Marriages in England and Wales: 2015

• Revised Annual Mid-Year Population Estimates: 2012 to 2016

Please follow our population statistician on our new Twitter account @RichardPereira_ONS for the latest in population statistics news and updates. We now have a new Twitter account for migration @JayLindop_ONS.

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