Quarterly Population Estimates for England and Wales.
Why are QPEs important?
Population statistics are used by national and local government for planning and monitoring purposes and in resource allocation. Another important use of these population statistics is to provide population controls for grossing results from sample surveys to represent the whole population and, in particular, for grossing the results from the Labour Force Survey (LFS).
The LFS is a continuous household survey that is carried out by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) by interviewing people about their personal circumstances and work. The results from the sample are grossed to represent the whole population and are published about six weeks after the quarter to which they relate.
To enable the sample to represent the whole population, grossing needs to take place. At present, the national and local authority mid-year population estimates for the UK are not available until 14 months after the date to which they relate. Quarterly Population Estimates (QPEs) are released 7-12 weeks (dependant on the quarter) after the reference period and so more time grossing totals are produced for the LFS. The QPEs take advantage of more recently available data on births, deaths and net migration.
QPEs were first published on 14 December 2004 and are currently classed as Experimental Statistics. The estimates are available for June 1995 onwards and provide early seasonal estimates of the stock population. Estimates are published 7-8 weeks after the end of each quarter with the exception of Quarter 2 (ending 30 June) when they are published approximately 12 weeks after this date to take account of the latest mid-year estimates. Estimates are available by quinary age groups and sex.
QPEs are revised once a year, when the latest mid-year estimate is available and later QPEs are rebased to this mid-year estimate.
Further information
The latest QPEs and detailed methodology can be found at:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/STATBASE/Product.asp?vlnk=13523
A guide to Experimental Statistics can be found at:
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/CCI/nugget.asp?ID=173
If you would like further information about QPEs or would like to feed in your views as a potential user, please contact:
Quarterly Population Estimates
Room 2300
Office for National Statistics
Segensworth Road, Titchfield
Fareham Hampshire
PO15 5RR
Telephone 01329 4444673
email: qpe@ons.gov.uk
This page last revised: Tuesday, 12 May 2009
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Quarterly Population Estimates for England and Wales.