Scottish Surveys Core Questions 2014

7 Country of Birth

The country of birth of respondents is collected in detail by the pooled surveys. Reporting on the data in this way would uniquely identify, and therefore potentially disclose the identity of, participants from a range of countries. For this reason, country of birth has been presented as follows:

• Scotland: Respondents who specifically list "Scotland" as their country of birth
• Rest of UK: England, Northern Ireland, Wales, Great Britain/United Kingdom (Not Otherwise Specified)
• Rest of EU: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus (European Union), Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, , Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden
• Rest of World: All other responses (excluding refusals)

Note that in 2012 an error in questionnaire scripting in the SHS meant that data on country of birth was partly missing. This issue was resolved by calculating a specific weight for country of birth statistics from the 2012 data. For further information see section 1.5 of the SSCQ Technical Notes ^[43] .

Summary Findings

• Those born outside Scotland - in the UK or in the wider EU - report higher levels of good/very good general health. The difference in those from the rest of the world is not statistically significant after age standardisation.
• Those born outside of the UK in the EU have lower levels of long-term limiting health conditions than the national average (8.5% compared with 23.2% nationally; 15.6% after age standardisation).
• Smoking rates among those born in the UK outside Scotland or the rest of the world outside the EU are somewhat lower than the national average, while those from the EU outside the UK are somewhat higher.
• All groups born outside of Scotland have higher mental wellbeing scores on average.
• Those born outside the UK are less likely to provide unpaid care.

Figure 17: Age profile of country of birth groups, SSCQ 2014

There are significant differences in the age distribution of these groups. For this reason, age standardisation is applied to many of the analyses in the following section. For more information on this process, see section 11.10.

Table 60: Age profile of country of birth groups, SSCQ 2014

	Proportion in Age Group (Row %)						Adults	Col%
	16-24	25-34	35-44	45-54	55-64	65+
Scotland	13.9	14.2	14.0	18.6	16.0	23.3	3,547,000	80%
Rest of UK	11.9	12.1	17.9	19.6	15.4	23.2	493,300	11%
Rest of EU	17.2	42.9	21.0	7.6	5.4	5.8	191,100	4%
Rest of World	18.2	26.5	25.3	14.5	7.7	7.8	199,500	4%

Throughout this chapter, statistical testing is used to identify differences between subgroups. For this purpose, the group born in Scotland is used as the basis for comparison. Where p-values are provided, a value of less than 0.05 indicates statistical significance at the 95% level. For more information about statistical tests, see section 11.11.

7.1 General Health

Table 61: Good/very good general health by country of birth, SSCQ 2014; changes from 2013 and 2012

		2014		Change
		grp %	+/-	from 2013	from 2012
Country of Birth	Scotland	72.5	± 0.8	-1.0	-0.2
	Rest of UK	76.7	± 2.1	-2.1	+3.1
	Rest of EU	88.4	± 2.7	+0.3	+3.1
	Rest of World	82.6	± 3.3	-3.8	+0.5

There are clear differences in the levels of good or very good general health by country of birth. Those born in Scotland had the lowest levels overall (72.5%), while those born in the "Rest of EU" rate their health the highest (88.4%).

Table 62: General health - age standardised country of birth group results, SSCQ 2014

	Base level	Age standardised
Scotland	72.5%	73.1%	± 0.8
Rest of UK	76.7%	77.2%	± 2.1
Rest of EU	88.4%	80.7%	± 4.2
Rest of World	82.6%	76.4%	± 4.2

When the differing age profiles of these groups is taken into account, the group born in "Rest of World" drops back to levels comparible with those born in Scotland (76.4% - not statistically different from the 73.1% in those born in Scotland).

Those born outside Scotland in the UK, or in the rest of the EU, still have statistically significant higher levels of good/very good general health than Scotland after age standardisation.

7.2 Long-term Limiting Health Conditions

Table 63: Long-term limiting health conditions by country of birth, SSCQ 2014; changes from 2013 and 2012

		2014		Change
		grp %	+/-	from 2013		from 2012
Country of Birth	Scotland	24.8	± 0.8	+1.2		+0.1
	Rest of UK	21.7	± 2.0	+1.7		-2.0
	Rest of EU	8.5	± 2.0	-2.1		-4.2
	Rest of World	13.4	± 2.8	+1.5		-0.1

Individuals born outside of Scotland tend to have lower levels of long-term limiting health conditions: around a quarter of those born in Scotland compared with 21.7% of those born in the rest of the UK, 8.5% of those born in the rest of the EU, and 13.4% in the rest of the world. However there are also large differences in age distribution between these groups.

Age standardised results are provided in Figure 18 and Table 64. These indicate that if the population born outside the UK in the EU had the same age distribution as Scotland as a whole, they would still be significantly less likely to report a long-term limiting health condition. The group born in the rest of the world would not be different from the national average rate.

Table 64: Long-term limiting health conditions - age standardised country of birth results, SSCQ 2014

	Base level	Age standardised
Scotland	24.8%	24.2%	± 0.8
Rest of UK	21.7%	21.4%	± 2.0
Rest of EU	8.5%	15.6%	± 3.7
Rest of World	13.4%	20.9%	± 4.1

Figure 18: Long-term limiting health conditions by country of birth, SSCQ 2014 base and age standardised levels

7.3 Smoking

Smoking rates among those born in the UK outside Scotland or the rest of the world outside the EU are somewhat lower than the national average, while those from the EU outside the UK are somewhat higher. Age standardisation has little effect on these differences.

Table 65: Smoking prevalence by country of birth, SSCQ 2014; changes from 2013 and 2012

		2014		Change
		grp %	+/-	from 2013	from 2012
Country of Birth	Scotland	22.2	± 0.8	-1.1	-2.5
	Rest of UK	15.5	± 1.9	-0.3	-4.1
	Rest of EU	25.5	± 3.9	-5.8	-2.7
	Rest of World	13.3	± 3.0	-0.8	-1.5

Smoking rates among those born in Scotland and the rest of the UK have seen clear reductions since 2012; a reduction of 2.5 and 4.1 percentage points respectively. Indeed smoking rates across all country of birth groups have fallen, but in other groups the changes are not large enough to be statistically significant given their smaller sample sizes.

7.4 Mental Wellbeing

All groups born outside of Scotland have higher mental wellbeing scores on average. ^[44] The differences remain statistically significant after age standardisation. The largest difference from those born in Scotland is among those born outside the UK in the EU, with a 1 point difference.

Table 66: Average SWEMWBS score by country of birth, 2014

		2014
		Mean	+/-
Country of Birth	Scotland	24.4	± 0.1
	Rest of UK	24.7	± 0.2
	Rest of EU	25.4	± 0.4
	Rest of World	25.0	± 0.4

7.5 Provision of Unpaid Care

Those born outside the UK are less likely to provide unpaid care. This is not unexpected given that many will be migrants to Scotland and may have moved without older members of their families. This effect is decreased but not eliminated by age standardisation, as shown in Table 67.

Table 67: Provision of unpaid care by country of birth, SSCQ 2014

		2014		Age standardised
		grp %	+/-	grp %	+/-
Country of Birth	Scotland	18.9	± 0.8	18.8	± 0.8
	Rest of UK	17.1	± 2.0	16.4	± 2.0
	Rest of EU	8.7	± 2.4	12.6	± 3.8
	Rest of World	10.2	± 3.0	10.4	± 3.0

7.6 Perceptions of Local Crime Rate

There are no significant differences in the perceptions of local crime rate between adults with different countries of birth shown in Table 68. The detected rise in perceptions among those born in Scotland reflects the rise at the national level.

Table 68: Local crime rate by country of birth, SSCQ 2014; changes from 2013 and 2012

		2014		Change
		grp %	+/-	from 2013	from 2012
Country of Birth	Scotland	77.2	± 0.9	-0.5	+1.6
	Rest of UK	78.4	± 2.6	+0.6	-1.4
	Rest of EU	77.1	± 4.9	+3.2	-0.6
	Rest of World	79.3	± 4.5	-0.1	+2.6

7.7 Confidence in Policing

Analysis of Confidence in Police is conducted on latent classes across all six questions. These statistics are in development and are therefore provided in a supplementary paper available from the SSCQ website. ^[45]