Statistics Estonia

Population and Social Statistics Department

Statistics Estonia
Tatari 51, 10134 Tallinn
Population and Social Statistics Department

First results on the main demographic developments in the year of reference.

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Number of persons.

Reference area is the total area of Estonia.

Population – since 1920s

Live births – since 1920s

Deaths – since 1920s

Immigrants – since 2000s

Emigrants - since 2000s

Not applicable.

Data is collected at unit (person) level.

The reference date for population data is the end of the reference period (midnight of 31 December).

The reference period for vital and dual events data is the calendar year in which the events occurred.
The reference period for migration flow data is the calendar year in which the migration occurred.

National level:

Official Statistics Act

European level:

Regulation (EU) No 1260/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council on European demographic statistics.

Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 205/2014 of Regulation (EU) No 1260/2013

Microdata is not shared, except for scientific purposes.

The dissemination of data collected for the purpose of producing official statistics is guided by the requirements provided for in § 32, § 34, § 35, § 38 of the Official Statistics Act.

The principles for treatment of confidential data can be found here.

Not applicable.

Population: provisional data for the preceding year are published in January and final data in May. 

Births and deaths: provisional data are published monthly, and final data for the preceding year once a year in May. 

Migrations: no provisional data are published. Final data for the preceding year are published in May.

https://www.stat.ee/en/calendar

Release calender is accessible through Statistic Estonia website: https://www.stat.ee/en/calendar. It is based on the release policy - data on specific theme is released during the same period each year. All users have access to data at the same time.

Population, Vital and Migration Statistics are published annually.

In addition, provisional statistics on births and deaths are published monthly. 

The news release „Preliminary population, 1 January 201X” in January. The news release „Revised population, 1 January 201X” in May. The news releases can be viewed on the website https://www.stat.ee/en/news. 

No printed publications.

Population Data are published under the heading “Population/ Population figure and composition” and Vital Events Data under the heading “Population/ Vital events” in the Statistical Database in https://andmed.stat.ee/en/stat.

Microdata is not shared, except for scientific purposes.

Not available.

To assure the quality of processes and products, Statistics Estonia applies the EFQM Excellence Model, EU Statistics Code of Practice and the ESS Quality Assurance Framework (QAF). Statistics Estonia is also guided by the requirements provided for in § 7. „Principles and quality criteria of producing official statistics” of the Official Statistics Act.

Users are public authorities, municipalities, media, researchers, and individuals.

Nationally, the data are used in public planning, population forecasting, policy development (for example, family and pension policy), research, and public debate.

Internationally, the data are used by international organizations in analysis and research, in-country comparisons, and in policy-making. The data are also used in international research and for private purposes.

Population data are also used widely as a foundation for many other statistics.

Since 1996, Statistics Estonia has conducted reputation and user satisfaction surveys. All results are available on the website of Statistics Estonia in the section User surveys.

Use of administrative data ensures complete coverage and up-to-date data. In compliance with the regulations.

According to Article 4 (2) of the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) No 205/2014, each year Member States shall provide the Commission (Eurostat) with data at national and regional level as described in Annex II and related standard reference metadata (in the metadata structure definition defined for the Euro SDMX Metadata Structure) for the reference year within 12 months of the end of the reference year. According to Article 3 (2) of the Commission Regulation (EC) No 862/2007, Statistics on international migration, usually resident population and acquisition of citizenship shall be supplied to the Commission (Eurostat) within 12 months of the end of the reference year.

Data is transmitted on time.

The data are internationally comparable.

No difference.

Statistics are consistent within the dataset.

Population data are based on administrative sources, therefore there is no burden on the respondents.

The data revision policy and notification of corrections are described in the section Principles of dissemination of official statistics of the website of Statistics Estonia.

Input data and outputs are compared with the data of the previous periods and across different administrative units.

The published data may be revised if errors are discovered.

Revised outputs in the national statistical database are clearly labelled with the new publishing date and the details of an update are described in the Notes section accompanied by the data table. 

Annual.

Data are collected through administrative data sources.

Administrative data are received via X-Road, an FTP-server and by (encrypted) e-mail.

Arithmetic and qualitative controls are used in the validation process, including comparison with the data of previous periods and other surveys.

Microdata is available at the person level and the place of usual residence data is available at the address level (and can be linked to x,y coordinates). 

Therefore data can be aggregated to any given population group and spatial unit (e.g. grid). 

Imputation is not applied. 

Since 2016, the usual resident population has been determined using signs-of-life-based methodology called the residency index. The residence index is used to find the probability of living in Estonia for each person. The features necessary to identify each person are found by using the different registers in a specific priority order. 

Residency index methodology in more detail is available here: Implementation of the residency index in demographic statistics 

In short: The method is based on the idea that each potential inhabitant of Estonia is assigned an index which shows the person’s likelihood of being a permanent inhabitant of Estonia, i.e. a resident. The value of the index ranges between 0 and 1. The greater the index value, the more likely it is that a person is a resident of Estonia. A threshold is used to make the distinction between definite residents and definite non-residents: those whose index value is above the threshold are considered residents. In order to calculate the index, approximately 20 Estonian administrative registers and sub-registers are used, including the Estonian Education Information System, the State Pension Insurance Register, the health insurance database, etc. Each register or sub-register gives a person one so-called sign of life. The signs of life are not equal; thus, each sign of life has been assigned a weight. 

All persons whose index was 0 at the beginning of the year and 1 at the end of the year are recorded as persons having been born or immigrated to Estonia in the respective year. In the opposite situation, where a person’s index was 1 at the beginning of the year and 0 at the year end, the person is considered as having died or emigrated in the respective year. In order to distinguish emigration from births and deaths, register data are used and supplemented with the data of the Police and Border Guard Board. 

A register-based alternative would be to base the census population on the Population Register and define the statistical population as the registered population. This would however underestimate the migration in annual population statistics as a significant amount of immigration and emigration is not registered in the Population Register (meaning that people move abroad but do not update their address/country of residence in the Population Register or vice versal people move to Estonia and do not register their place of residence in the Population Register). 

Not available.