National Records of Scotland (NRS) has published ‘Scotland’s Population 2016 – the Registrar General’s Annual Review of Demographic Trends’.
The
Annual Review has been published every year since 1855 and gives an insight into the changing demographic profile of Scotland. The report also includes new data about births, adoptions, deaths,
marriages and civil partnerships registered in Scotland in 2016. It shows:
- 54,488 births were registered in Scotland in 2016, 1.1% fewer births than in 2015 and the lowest annual total since 2005. The percentage of babies born to unmarried couples was 50.9% in 2016, compared to 47.7% ten years earlier and 36.0% in 1996. Most births were registered by both parents, whether married or not.
- There were 29,229 marriages registered in Scotland in 2016. Of these, 28,231 were opposite-sex marriages and 998 were same-sex marriages (involving 391 male couples and 607 female couples). Around one in six same-sex marriages in 2016 were of couples who changed their existing civil partnership to a marriage (173, 17%). With the introduction of same-sex marriages, those choosing to enter into civil partnerships have declined, with only 70 civil partnerships in 2016.
- In 2016, there were 523 adoptions recorded in Scotland. This was 19 more than in 2015 and was the highest number recorded since 1996. This is around half the number recorded per year in the mid-1980s, and less than a third of the 1975 total.
- 56,728 deaths were registered in Scotland in 2016, 1.5% fewer than in 2015.
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