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Occasional Paper

3.3 How are the small area estimates calculated?

The small area estimates presented here have been constrained to the GROS MYE as these are generally considered to be the best estimates of the population. It was also felt that small area estimates needed to be consistent with the GROS MYE to avoid any confusion over which population estimates should be used for certain geographies.

To meet the main geography requirement (postcode sectors and 1999 wards), population estimates are needed at the lowest building brick. That is, a population estimate, by postcode, sex and single year of age for each unit postcode. This enables different aggregations of the building bricks to produce different geographies. However, data at the building brick level will not be made available to the public because of confidentiality considerations and the likely inaccuracy of the data to such detail.

Finally, as shown in Table 1 the CHI does not include the AF population and therefore the CHI was used only to derive estimates of the civilian population. Data from the 10 per cent sample of 1991 Census records was used to derive estimates of the non-civilian population, i.e. Armed Forces, to a building brick level. These two components were then added together to produce the small area population estimates presented in this dataset. The resultant population estimates will be consistent by sex and single year of age, with the GROS 1999 mid-year population estimates at the council, health board and national level.