Frameworks for guiding the development and improvement of population statistics in the United Kingdom

The article presents central frameworks for guiding the development and improvement of population statistics. A shared understanding between producers and users of statistics is needed with regard to the concepts, data, processes, and outputs produced. In the United Kingdom, population estimates are produced by conducting decennial censuses and by estimating intercensus populations through the addition and subtraction of the demographic components of change derived from registers of vital events and from a combination of administrative data and surveys for internal and international migration. In addition, data cleaning, imputation, and modelling may be required to produce the desired population statistics. The frameworks presented in this paper are useful for aligning the required concepts of population statistics with the various sources of available data. Taken together, they provide a general ‘recipe’ for the continued improvement and expansion of official statistics on population and demographic change.