Scottish Census Analysis 2022

Introduction

Logo for Scotland’s Census

This report contains an analysis of the 2022 Scottish Census Data, focusing on questions relating to national identity, analysed by age and region.

Sources of data

1. 2022 output area data. This is the data in file OA22_SPR25.csv. It contains the Output Area codes (see below) and which of 16 Regions they are in.
2. Census Index - Pre-operative Scottish Parliamentary Regions and Constituencies 2025. This is in the data in file OA22_SPC25.csv. It contains the Output Area codes and which of 73 constituencies they are in.
3. National Identity. This is in the data file UV202 - National Identity.csv. It contains a count of how many people in each Output Area answered each National Identity category.

Region

The Census results are provided broken down into Output Areas. According to data.gov.uk:

Output Areas (OAs) are the key geography for dissemination of small area statistics from the Census. OAs are large enough for Census statistics to be released without infringing confidentiality. They are designed to have relatively small numbers of households (in the range of 25 to 89) and population (>=60), while nesting within Council areas. They also act as the basic “building-blocks” for the creation of other geographies such as Data Zones. There are 46,363 Census 2022 OAs in Scotland.

Each OA is associated with one of eight Parliamentary Regions (see Table 1). Output Areas are not based on how big places are on the map but on how many people and households live there, so regions with more OAs are simply those that contain more residents and homes. This means a densely populated urban region like Glasgow needs many small OAs packed into a small land area, whereas a sparsely populated region like Highlands and Islands can cover the same number of people with fewer OAs that are physically much larger.

Table 1: Number of Output Areas per Region

region	n
North East Scotland	6523
West Scotland	6422
South Scotland	6394
Edinburgh and Lothians East	5889
Central Scotland and Lothians West	5811
Glasgow	5758
Mid Scotland and Fife	5666
Highlands and Islands	3900

National Identity

In the 2022 edition of Scotland’s Census 2022 respondents were asked a “national identity” question in addition to ethnicity. You can read more about how the question was asked and the response categories via scotlandscensus.gov.uk.

Across all people and regions, the most common identity was “Scottish identity only” with 65.47% of Census respondents indicating this as their national identity (see Table 2).

Table 2: National identity across all OAs

identity	Number	Percent
Scottish identity only	3561311	65.47
British identity only	758013	13.94
Scottish and British identities only	447429	8.23
Other identity only (1)	351713	6.47
English identity only	125196	2.30
Scottish and any other identities	110347	2.03
Any other combination of UK identities (UK only)	67563	1.24
Other identity and at least one UK identity	17879	0.33

National Identity by Region

This analysis looks at national identity by region, for the two most common responses (Scottish identity only and British identity only).

Table 3: National identity for Scottish and British identity only by region (expressed in percent)

region	Scottish identity only	British identity only
Central Scotland and Lothians West	72.71	11.79
West Scotland	69.91	13.85
South Scotland	67.95	15.14
Mid Scotland and Fife	66.22	14.49
North East Scotland	65.37	12.93
Highlands and Islands	64.73	16.41
Glasgow	63.14	11.80
Edinburgh and Lothians East	52.87	15.95

Figure 1: National Identity by Region

The relationship between Scottish and British identity

This plot shows the relationship between the percent of people who indicated a Scottish only identity vs a British only identity in each of the 73 parliamentary constituencies. A few of the notable outliers are annotated on the plot.

Figure 2: British vs Scottish Identity by Constituency

Analysis and interpretation

Taken together, these results suggest a national identity landscape in Scotland that is both strongly Scottish and regionally differentiated. Across all output areas, around two thirds of residents identify as “Scottish only”, with a much smaller but non-trivial minority choosing “British only”, and relatively few selecting a mixed Scottish–British identity.

This pattern is consistent with the official 2022 Census release, which reports increases since 2011 in both exclusively Scottish and exclusively British identities, alongside a marked decline in people who describe themselves as both Scottish and British, pointing to a shift away from hybrid identities towards more singular ones.

Regionally, every parliamentary region has a majority of “Scottish only” identifiers, but the strength of that majority varies. Central Scotland and Lothians West sits at the top of the range, whereas Edinburgh and Lothians East has a noticeably lower proportion of “Scottish only” identifiers and one of the highest proportions selecting “British only”, a pattern that aligns with evidence that areas with higher inward migration and stronger social and economic ties to the rest of the UK tend to show a more mixed or British-leaning profile.

The constituency-level scatterplot reinforces this picture, suggesting a broad trade-off between Scottish-only and British-only identities, with urban seats such as Edinburgh Central, Glasgow Central and Aberdeen Central standing out as outliers where British identification is relatively higher for a given level of Scottish identification. In these urban centres, a smaller proportion of the data is explained by these two categories, that is, there are more people who responded that their national identity was in another category.