Northern Ireland Mid-Year Population Estimates

Population Estimates for Northern Ireland are official mid-year statistics used for public fund allocation via the Barnett formula. These estimates are critical for government departments in Northern Ireland to plan health, education, and other public services. They also serve as a foundational dataset for academic research, demographic rate calculations, and population projections.

Use Cases

• Allocating public funds to the Northern Ireland Executive based on the Barnett formula.
• Planning health and education service capacity using annual population figures.
• Calculating per-capita rates for socio-economic indicators to enable UK-wide comparisons.
• Creating future population projections based on historical estimate trends.

Strengths

• Serves as an official government statistic with a clear institutional purpose for fund allocation.
• Cross-platform presence on eu_open_data and uk_data indicates recognized importance and reliability.
• Has a defined update schedule, with a last updated date of 2026-07-08 noted on two platforms.

Limitations

• Key structural metadata is missing, including column names, row count, and specific time range of the data.
• The 'last updated' date of 2026-07-08 is in the future, indicating a potential metadata error or placeholder value.
• Descriptions are identical across platforms, limiting the depth of available contextual information.

Provenance

Source

Government Digital Service (as listed on eu_open_data platform).

Collection Method

Official government statistical production, likely based on administrative records and censuses.

Freshness

2026-07-08 13:33:22.425160

Geography

Northern Ireland