This project aimed to extend knowledge of late nineteenth century Scottish, and hence British, demography, by producing four parallel longitudinal data sets by linking individuals in the decennial censuses of 1861-1901 with the births, deaths and marriages from civil registers for the lowland town of Kilmarnock, the Hebridean Island of Skye, and the rural parishes of Torthorwald and Rothiemay, places with contrasting economic and social structures and physical environments. The resulting data source is rich in information relating to the social, occupational, household, and demographic characteristics of individuals, who can also be situated within their physical environment. The relatively large scale of the data-sets allows greater accuracy and detail in the multivariate analysis of mortality, fertility, nuptiality and migration. Special permission was granted by the General Register Office, Edinburgh, for access to the civil registers of births, marriages and deaths, and these have been linked to the census entries for the same individuals, allowing the creation of full or partial life histories. Linkage has been carried out using a sets of related individuals approach in a relational data-base system using computer algorithms and hand-finishing (see Reid, Davies and Garrett (2006) 'Nineteenth century Scottish demography from linked censuses and civil registers: a sets of related individuals approach', History and Computing, 14(1+2), 2002 (publ. 2006), pp. 61-86).

The terms of our agreement with the General Register Office for Scotland do not allow us to deposit the births, marriages and deaths for archiving, which prevents deposit of the linked material. However we can deposit the census material annotated to include the years of birth, death and marriage of an individual (but no other details of these events). Two separate census deposits are being made. This is a version of the raw data, with no standardisation or enhancement apart from corrections or changes to ensure consistency, notes made by data entry personnel, and household and individual identifiers.

This data set contains the life tables the were computed for the study presented in: Torres, C., V. Canudas-Romo, and J. Oeppen (2019) 'The contribution of urbanization to changes in life expectancy in Scotland, 1861–1910', Population Studies, 73:3, 387-404, DOI: 10.1080/00324728.2018.1549746

The life tables are by sex and urban-rural category. For reasons explained in the paper, the tables cover periods of different lengths, from 1861 to 1910.

Example of how to load the data in R:

LT <- read.table("Urban-Rural-LifeTables-Scotland-1861-1910.txt", header = T, sep = ";")

Description of each column:
Period: time-interval, including the first and excluding the last indicated years (e.g., [1861,1866) corresponds to the years from 1861 to 1865). Available periods: 1861-1865, 1866-1870, 1871-1874, 1875-1877, 1878-1880, 1881-1885, 1886-1890, 1891-1892, 1893-1896, 1897-1900, 1901-1905, 1906-1910.
Population: Rural, Semi-Urban, Urban, or Total population (see definitions in Torres et al. 2019)
Sex: Female or Male
x : Age (from 0 to 110+, by single ages)
nmx: Death rate in the age interval [x, x+n)
nax: average number of person-years lived in the age interval [x, x+n) by those who die in that interval
nqx: Probability of dying in the age interval [x, x+n)
lx: number of survivors at exact age x, or probability of surviving until exact age x
ndx: Life-table deaths in the age interval [x, x+n)
nLx: Person-years lived in the age interval [x, x+n)
Tx: Person-years lived above age x
ex: Remaining life expectancy at age x

For more information about life tables in general, see: Preston, S., Heuveline, P., and Guillot, M. (2001). Demography: Measuring and Modeling Population Processes. Wiley-Blackwell

The 2021 Northern Ireland Census marked the first time since records began where the Catholic share of the population was larger than the combined Protestant share. In 2021, over 42 percent of the population classified themselves as Catholic or from a Catholic background, in comparison with 37 percent classified as Protestant or from a Protestant background. Additionally, the share of the population with no religion (or those who did not answer) was 19 percent; larger than any individual Protestant denomination. This marks a significant shift in demographic and societal trends over the past century, as Protestants outnumbered Catholics by roughly 2:1 when Northern Ireland was established in the 1920s. Given the Catholic community's historic tendency to be in favor of a united Ireland, many look to the changing religious composition of the population when assessing the potential for Irish reunification. Religion's historical influence A major development in the history of British rule in ireland was the Plantation of Ulster in the 1600s, where much of the land in the north (historically the most rebellious region) was seized from Irish Catholics and given to Protestant settlers from Britain (predominantly Scots). This helped establish Protestant dominance in the north, created a large section of the population loyal to the British crown, and saw a distinct Ulster-Scots identity develop over time. In the 1920s, the republican movement won independence for 26 of Ireland's 32 counties, however, the six counties in Ulster with the largest Protestant populations remained part of the UK, as Northern Ireland. Following partition, structural inequalities between Northern Ireland's Protestant and Catholic communities meant that the Protestant population was generally wealthier, better educated, more politically empowered, and had better access to housing, among other advantages. In the 1960s, a civil rights movement then emerged for equal rights and status for both sides of the population, but this quickly turned violent and escalated into a the three-decade long conflict now known as the Troubles.

The Troubles was largely fought between nationalist/republican paramilitaries (mostly Catholic), unionist/loyalist paramilitaries (mostly Protestant), and British security forces (including the police). This is often described as a religious conflict, however it is more accurately described as an ethnic and political conflict, where the Catholic community generally favored Northern Ireland's reunification with the rest of the island, while the Protestant community wished to remain in the UK. Paramilitaries had a large amount of support from their respective communities in the early years of the Troubles, but this waned as the conflict progressed into the 1980s and 1990s. Demographic and societal trends influenced the religious composition of Northern Ireland's population in these decades, as the Catholic community had higher fertility rates than Protestant communities, while the growing secularism has coincided with a decline in those identifying as Protestant - the dip in those identifying as Catholic in the 1970s and 1980s was due to a protest and boycott of the Census. The Troubles came to an end in 1998, and divisions between both sides of the community have drastically fallen, although they have not disappeared completely.