Variant population projections for the United Kingdom and its constituent countries

Interest has been growing steadily in understanding the impact of the inherent uncertainty in the national population projections. As a result, the Government Acturay's Department has recently produced the most extensive set of official variant projections ever published in the United Kingdom. These include 'standard' variants based on alternative high and low assumptions for future fertility, life expectancy and net migration and also a number of 'special case scenarios.' All of these variants have been produced at both UK and individual country level. This article describes the full range of variant projections available from the 2000-based national projections and summaries some of the key results for both the UK and the individual countries.