DS Population > Demography > Info on data EN REVAMP
Data collections
Eurostat collects demographic data at national and at regional level from the national statistical institutes (NSIs) of the EU members and from almost all non-EU countries in Europe, including the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries, candidate countries, and potential candidates.
Main annual data collections
There are four main annual data collections in the area of demography.
The Demographic Balance data collection
By end of June of year n, this collection provides the first demographic data for the year n-1 and an estimate of the total population on 1 January of year n.
Collected by the end of August from EU Member States to fulfil specific purposes linked to EU legislation, in particular the weighting by qualified majority of the votes in the Council of the European Union. In this case, the definition of population is therefore uniform for all countries.
By the end of each year n, this collection provides data for different breakdowns for the population, live births, deaths, marriages and divorces on a national as well as regional level for the year n-1.
Eurostat publishes demographic data and indicators at European, national and regional levels.
The length of the available time series depends on the population breakdowns. The longest time series for national data start in 1960 and for regional data in 1990.
Content of different database folders
Main population indicators include annual indicators on:
Population balance, e.g. total and average population, total and natural population change, population turnover, crude rates (total population change, birth, death, natural change, etc.
Population structure, e.g. proportion of population by age groups, median age of population, variants of age dependency ratios, women per 100 men
Population density
Population on 1 January provides a rich collection of annual data by various breakdowns, such as age, sex, country of birth, citizenship, educational attainment, etc.
Fertility and Mortality provides annual data on vital events, including fertility indicators (e.g. total fertility rate, median and mean age of women at childbirth), mortality indicators (e.g. life expectancy at given age, age specific death rate, etc.) and more frequent data on deaths by week and excess mortality by month.
Marriages and divorces provides annual data and indicators, such as crude marriage and divorce rates, total first marriage rate, divorces per 100 marriages.
Folders located elsewhere in the database: Demographic data is also available in other database folders, such as under ‘Regional statistics’.
Eurostat derives geographical aggregates for the EU and the euro area by applying common aggregation methods. These are based on the national detailed figures on population and other demographic events transmitted by the national statistical institutes,
Demographic aggregates expressed in number are obtained from the arithmetical sum of the EU countries. If values are missing for one or more countries, geographical aggregates may exceptionally be estimated using the previous year’s available data.
Such cases occur for the series collected on a voluntary basis (for instance, for marriages and divorces) and, very rarely, when the latest statistics are not transmitted on time by some Member States.
For demographic indicators, the aggregates are calculated by applying the same method applied to indicators of an individual country. The input for calculation is the aggregated raw data transmitted by the national statistical institutes.
Example
The median age of the EU population is not the average of median population ages for individual countries. Instead, it is computed as the median age across the sum of the population of all Member States, meaning that 50% of the total EU population are younger and 50% of the total EU population are older than the median age.
The table below shows you an overview of the timing of data releases for each reference year T:
Time
Release
February - March
year T+1
Monthly data on total live births and deaths by months from January to June of year T.
July
year T+1
Provisional first estimates of the main demographic developments: total population on 31 December of year T (published as population on 1 January of year T+1 by Eurostat), total live births and total deaths during year T.
October
year T+1
Total usually resident population on 31 December of year T (published as population on 1 January of year T+1 by Eurostat), used for qualified majority voting in the Council of the EU.
February - March
year T+2
Detailed annual data on total population, live births and deaths with various breakdowns and marriages and divorces together with data on international migration.
Data on all-causes weekly deaths are typically released with a few days delay, i.e. as soon as transmitted by the countries and validated by Eurostat. Excess mortality is published every month.
Data revision policy
Eurostat encourages national statistical institutes to keep demographic statistics up to date. Countries may send updates of the data which they previously provided throughout the entire year in line with their release calendar and more recent data source information. Thus, updates of the data in Eurostat's database may occur outside of the major updates dates outlined above.
A few situations may arise which result in displaying different figures for the population on 1 January in the different available tables or datasets for a period of time. Possible underlying reasons are:
The timing of the transmission or re-transmission of data to Eurostat in case of revision of the population data for various breakdowns.
The successive annual demography data collections outlined above, as data on total population and the available breakdowns of population data by various characteristics are collected and updated at different times during the calendar year.
The calendars of the national statistical institutes for producing and releasing population data broken down by characteristics, which are part of the voluntary data collection, and the timing of data transmission to Eurostat.
This dataset includes the latest updates (or revised data) on the total population, births and deaths reported by the countries. Detailed breakdowns by various characteristics included other population datasets may be transmitted to Eurostat at a subsequent date.
