Birth, death and the bit in between

This is third post in this series about population and sheds some light in things discussed in the last two posts: Scotland’s current population and Scotland’s population – long view.

The following graph shows the number of people that were born and that died in each calendar year from 1855 to 2016.

Graph of births and deaths in Scotland.
Data here. Primary source: National Records of Scotland.

The first feature to catch the eye is that births exceeded deaths, sometimes by 2 to 1 during the late 19th century.  The number of births declined sharply during the First World War and then shot up again immediately after it. The dip in the population before the onset of war in 1914 noted in the previous post might well be related to the decreasing numbers of births apparent on this graph.

Births declined again in the inter-war years but started to climb during the late 1930s. There is a very slight dip in 1939 and 1940 but after that, quite unlike the previous war, it started to climb rapidly again from 1941. This may be related, one way or another, to the USA entering the war.

Following the spike at the end of the Second World War there is the broad baby-boomer bump that peaks in 1964. Thereafter the births fall quite rapidly so that in 1976 it actually falls below the number of deaths for the first time since 1855.

Births only just out-number deaths until 1995 when the situation reverses and deaths exceed births. This remains the case until 2006 when the situations reverses again as births increase and deaths decrease.

A notable feature, apparent from just a glance at the graph, is that the number of births shows far more rapid variation than deaths. Surprisingly, it is hard to see the enormity of the two world wars by looking at how deaths have varied, but both wars stand out clearly in the number of births. On the strength of this evidence it would seem that our geopolitical circumstances influence our desire to procreate more than they determine the timing of when we shuffle off this mortal coil.

Edit 12/12/2018: As pointed out in a comment below, the deaths time series does not include deaths that occurred outside Scotland. Only deaths that occurred in Scotland and so registered in Scotland are counted in this deaths time series. Full detail can be found in this explanatory note from the National Records of Scotland. This explains why the war does not show spikes in the numbers of deaths in these graphs. The comments in the previous post stand though as they all relate to residents of Scotland, and the population of Scotland did see a net increase over the Second World War.

Author: Andrew

Author of howscotlandworks.org

2 thoughts on “Birth, death and the bit in between”

  1. The reason that deaths don’t show spikes at the time of the world wars is that it is only deaths which occurred on Scottish soil which are included in the figures.

    1. Yes, you are quite right. I had mistakenly understood that the deaths were of Scottish residents but in this time series they are not: they are deaths registered in Scotland of any nationality. Many thanks for this. I’ve noted this in the post now.

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