11 mins
Scotland 2020
SCOTLAND SINCE 2000 IN NUMBERS
The Rev Fiona Tweedie, Mission Statistics Co-ordinator for the Church of Scotland
The year 2000 - start of a new millennium - what do you remember, if you are old enough to remember that far back? Tony Blair was Prime Minister, George W Bush President of the United States, Donald Dewar First Minister in Edinburgh. We had been saved from the Y2K bug, the World Trade Centre still stood in New York, and the Scottish Parliament met in the Assembly Hall, still a few years away from moving to Holyrood. Big Brother launched on TV, heralding a variety of ‘reality TV’ shows, as did The Weakest Link, while in music Kylie Minogue made a comeback, and Billy Elliot danced into our cinematic hearts. For me, my elder daughter was still a year away from being born; you may remember children, parents, or grandchildren. It may feel like a long time ago, or just like yesterday.
But Scotland as a country? What was it like compared to today? The bits we know and love, the bits we’d rather forget?
There are more Scots, and we’re more diverse
In 2000, there were 5,062,940 people living in Scotland, by 2018 it had gone up to 5,438,100. For every 100 people living in Scotland in 2000, there are 107 people living here now. Most of this change has been through migration into Scotland as natural change (the number of births - number of deaths) is smaller than in other parts of the UK. There are over 300,000 more people born outside the UK living in Scotland than there were in 2000, and the proportion of people who describe themselves as ‘white’ has fallen from 98% to 96%.
We are getting older, living longer, but dying of different things
Life expectancy in Scotland has risen 2.3 years to 81.1 years for women, and by 3.9 years to 79 years for men, but these figures are still the lowest of all UK countries. People who live in more deprived areas of Scotland live shorter lives - men in the most deprived areas living on average 13 fewer years than men in the least deprived areas. For women the difference is 9.5 years, but this has increased from 8 years in 2000. We’re becoming a more unequal society. What we die from has changed as well - since 2000, we’re much less likely to die from heart disease or strokes, but more likely to die from dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.
Funeral practice is also changing. The Church of Scotland didn’t start collecting data on funerals until 2005, but in that year the Church conducted 57% of funerals in Scotland - 32,768 funerals out of 55,747 deaths. By 2018, that figure had dropped to 30% - 17,332 funerals out of 58,503 deaths.
We’re not getting married, and if we do, we’re older, and it’s not in church
From just over 30,300 marriages in 2000, there were just over 27,500 marriages in 2018 - a fall of almost 10%. Same-sex civil partnerships were introduced in 2005 and same-sex marriages in 2014, and there were 1,044 of these in total in 2018.
Since 2000, both men and women are waiting around an extra three years with the average age at first marriage now being 34.3 years for men, and 32.6 for women. And in 2000, half of all marriages were held in church, mainly Churches of Scotland or Roman Catholic churches. Now that figure has halved again to nearly one quarter, with the Church of Scotland conducting a mere 10% (2,789) of Scottish weddings. Humanist celebrants were authorised to take weddings in 2005, and in 2018 conducted almost 6,400 (23%) ceremonies.
We are living in smaller households, and often by ourselves
In 2018 there were estimated to be 2.48 million households in Scotland, an increase of 13% (283,000) from 2000. This increase is almost double the 7% population increase, and household sizes are getting smaller, from an average of 2.27 people per household in 2000 to 2.15 people in 2018. One-person households are now the most common type of household, with an estimated 885,000 people living on their own, an increase of 23% since 2000.
We’re having fewer children, and waiting until we’re older to do so
There were 51,308 live births registered in Scotland in 2018, a fall of 3% from the 2000 figure of 53,076. In 2018 the average age of mothers was 30.6 years, and fathers were on average 2.5 years older. Looking back to 2000, both mothers and fathers are generally two years older in 2018.
We’re becoming less religious
In the 2001 Census, 42% of Scots claimed allegiance to the Church of Scotland, while 28% said that had “no religion”. By 2011 this order had reversed to 32% and 37%. While we await the 2021 Census, our best source the Scottish Household Survey, which for 2018 indicates a further fall in Church of Scotland allegiance to 22% (practically half of the 2001 figure), while a majority of the population (51%) say they have no religion.
It may feel like a long time ago, or just like yesterday. But Scotland as a country? What was it like compared to today? The bits we know and love, the bits we’d rather forget?
So what?
What does this mean for the Church of Scotland in 2020? Is it just a list of arid statistics, or can it breathe new life into our ministry and mission in our communities? How can we welcome new Scots into our congregations? How does the emphasis on ministry to children and families change with a falling birth rate and so many people living alone? How do we care for the increasing numbers of people with dementia, and those who care for them? These questions will be different in different parts of Scotland, but we all need to reflect on whether our ministry reaches those in our communities.
Figures taken from the most recently published, often as at 2018, and include data from the 2001 Census, 2018 SAPE estimates, RGAR 2018, all published by National Records of Scotland.
POLITICS
Irene Mackinnon, Acting Parliamentary Officer at the Scottish Churches Parliamentary Office (SCPO)
Twenty years ago the Scottish Parliament was established with a new vision for Scotland. Decisions would be made in Scotland, for the people of Scotland, devolving powers that could be implemented closer to home.
The churches across Scotland were part of the process from the very start as active members of the Scottish Constitutional Convention that paved the way for the first meeting of the Parliament in the Assembly Hall on the Mound in 1999
Alongside devolved powers, a new voting system was devised in Proportional Representation, reflecting the diversity of opinion across Scotland and encouraging collaboration across the political spectrum.
This new vision was further reflected in the Scottish Parliament building, which opened in 2004, and was designed to be more transparent, accessible and better attuned to the lives of ordinary working people. Even the way in which the debating chamber was designed in a horseshoe shape, rather than on opposing benches, envisioned a more co-operative and less adversarial way of working.
Over the past two decades many things
Over the past two decades many things have been achieved and further powers have been devolved. These areas include land reform, the ban on smoking in public places, and minimum pricing for alcohol.
In the past year, ambitious climate change legislation has been put on the statute books to tackle the climate emergency, and the Scottish Child Payment, which will start to come into effect by the end of this year, aims to lift 30,000 children out of poverty - an issue that the Church alongside others has campaigned for vociferously over the past few years.
However much of the conversation in Scotland over recent years has been focused on constitutional questions - namely the referendums on Scottish independence and whether or not the UK should leave the European Union.
The Scottish independence referendum in 2014 followed a couple of years of robust debate on the issues involved and churches were key in facilitating many of these discussions as a way of imagining Scotland’s future. No matter what opinions were held on the outcome, it was clear that the subject had galvanised the Scottish population with 84.6 per cent of them turning out to vote - the highest number recorded for an election or referendum in the UK since 1910. Those who had predicted the end of traditional forms of engagement such as town hall meetings and creating spaces for local conversations were forced to rethink the world of modern political strategy as people were motivated to act and record their choices publicly.
The result of the referendum on UK membership of the EU will continue to dominate much of the political debate as the ramifications of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU become more apparent. It does however change the circumstances in which the previous Scottish referendum was held and it remains to be seen if the leading party in Scotland - the Scottish National Party - will be able to use this justification to rerun the question on Scottish independence in the near future.
But there are many issues that affect the people in our local communities and these voices still need to be heard. The Scottish Parliament consistently scores well on public trust and the belief that it is acting in the best interests of people in Scotland, but for this to continue to be the case, we need to be involved.
As churches, we have a part to play in promoting a respectful dialogue between those of differing opinions, and engaging with our politicians regularly, as people that can only truly represent us if they know what our needs, concerns, and indeed visions of the future are.
We must continue to hold those that work in our Scottish Parliament and Government to account and be inspired by the vision of a better future that created devolution twenty years ago.
As Donald Dewar, the inaugural First Minister of Scotland said two decades ago, “There shall be a Scottish Parliament…Not an end: a means to greater ends…We are fallible. We all make mistakes. But we will never lose sight of what brought us here: the striving to do right by the people of Scotland; to respect their priorities; to better their lot; and to contribute to the common weal.” www.scpo.scot
MEDIA
Andrew Nicoll, political editor of the Scottish Sun, and a Church of Scotland elder.
Scotland’s news media has pretty much changed out of all recognition since the millennium. The thing is, nobody saw the iPad coming, nobody was ready for smartphones.
Twenty years ago is exactly half way through my career in Scottish daily newspapers. When I started at The Courier in Dundee, we were selling 145,000 copies a day. Two years later when I went to work in the Forfar branch office, our deadly rival, the weekly Forfar Dispatch, was selling 15,000.
Today, The Scotsman has a daily sale smaller than that.
On the other hand, The Scotsman is attracting around 140,000 people to its website every day. The newspaper still exists but the way it is consumed has changed completely and, of course, the website is free. People go there and consume news, comment and entertainment for nothing. Making it pay, ‘monetising the content’, is the tricky part. COVER
And, again, the internet is the problem. The way we communicate, the places we use to communicate have changed utterly and it has kicked the legs out from under local papers. Papers used to have advertising income. If you had something to sell, you put an ad in the paper. If you wanted a job, you looked in the paper. That’s as anachronistic as the town crier today.
If you’re looking to buy a second hand lawnmower, we’ve got Gumtree for that. Even the ‘hatched, matched and despatched’ ads have all but vanished.
It was once an essential part of life to mark our great occasions with a small ad: engagements, weddings, births, deaths.
All that has gone. We’ve got Facebook now and Twitter and Instagram and just straightforward email.
The changes brought about by the internet have reduced newspaper sales, they have reduced newspaper revenues and that means they have reduced newspaper staff who do more, with less than anybody would have thought possible.
I can’t pretend that any of this is a good thing. A diminished local newspaper network is bad for communities. The local paper is part of the mortar holding communities together. They let us talk to ourselves and hardworking local reporters do exactly the same job as those of us on national titles: they keep an eye on our masters, they speak truth to power, backed up by the might of their readership. That’s dwindling. It is irreplaceable.
The internet is a double edged sword. It makes communicating immeasurably easier, it makes sharing the news faster, it has provided new ways of gathering news.
But it has undermined journalism too. Anybody with a phone is now a ‘citizen journalist’. Torrents of unsourced opinion masquerading as news pour out of it every day and many of us seem unable to tell the difference
There are powerful people across the world who think that’s absolutely fine.
Next month: the changing face of the Church of Scotland since 2000.
This article appears in the March 2020 Issue of Life and Work
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