Statistics expert and author of 'Sum of Us' (2025) and 'Bad Data' (2022). Research Affiliate at the Oxford Migration Observatory. Formerly of the House of Commons Library. Now writing and podcasting on Substack https://georginasturge.substack.com/https://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.socialhttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3mwsn24rg4k2jNew post from me on Substack: some thoughts for our new National Statistician who will be taking up the role in November after a year and half with no one officially at the helm of UK statistics. One ongoing existential challenge awaits. https://georginasturge.substack.com/p/dear-national-statistician https://georginasturge.substack.com/p/dear-national-statistician?r=2ut0af&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true01 Oct 2026 10:19 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3mwsn24rg4k2jhttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3mwdf3cq2fc2rThis looks interesting - has there been real change in how people think of their national identity or is it a mirage in the statistics? https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/evidence-on-national-identity-in-england-policy-brief-launch-tickets-2000009737965?aff=oddtdtcreator25 Sep 2026 08:47 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3mwdf3cq2fc2rhttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3muzaupbcyk2zWould you look at that! After well over a year vacant, the position of National Statistician has at last been filled. Welcome André! 🍁 [contains quote post or other embedded content]08 Sep 2026 14:39 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3muzaupbcyk2zhttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3mmiwa2jwhc2dScotland was one of the big emigrant nations of the 19th century. I look forward to visiting this museum when it’s up and running. https://www.thetimes.com/article/da91973a-a567-4f3d-a01b-fc900bccb18e?shareToken=ba20523313bdb2ceffe7c4ba0cc04c1623 May 2026 07:25 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3mmiwa2jwhc2dhttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3mm74v32r6s2sIn my latest piece for Substack I reflect on new projections which raise the possibility that the UK population will shrink and ask, does a shrinking population mean we 'need' immigration? https://georginasturge.substack.com/p/does-a-shrinking-population-mean19 May 2026 09:57 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3mm74v32r6s2shttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3mm4x5yoqek26New projections have the UK population starting to shrink from 2055 onwards. Should net migration drop to zero, the population could be back at its 1880s level in 100 years time. Should we be worried about a shrinking population? Does it mean we need immigration? https://open.substack.com/pub/georginasturge/p/does-a-shrinking-population-mean https://open.substack.com/pub/georginasturge/p/does-a-shrinking-population-mean?r=2ut0af&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true18 May 2026 13:10 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3mm4x5yoqek26https://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3ml46lj4bjc2xImmigration has been cited as an important issue for voters in the upcoming Scot and Welsh elections, but nation-specific immigration figures are not that easy to come by. We've gathered some of the main statistics here. Did you realise Scotland hosts more international students than France...? [contains quote post or other embedded content]05 May 2026 12:25 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3ml46lj4bjc2xhttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3ml3vwxwg222s£70m over *5 years* doesn't seem so crazy, does it? The fact is, trying to get an increasingly-reluctant public to respond to surveys the only way we can find out about unemployment. That costs a lot more than it used to in the days of mostly obedient respondents. https://www.thetimes.com/business/economics/article/ons-spends-almost-70m-in-search-of-reliable-unemployment-data-s9lrgclgv05 May 2026 09:50 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3ml3vwxwg222shttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3mkklp7qkus27Big change today with the ONS's new population forecast. Rather than expecting the UK population to keep growing until 2095, the current projections have it start to decline from 2055 onwards. [contains quote post or other embedded content]28 Apr 2026 12:31 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3mkklp7qkus27https://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3mkhiryb33k2hA classic case of statistics becoming sharper with hindsight, requiring a longstanding narrative to be revised. [contains quote post or other embedded content]27 Apr 2026 07:01 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3mkhiryb33k2hhttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3mhxrth4vas23Wow - The Bible Society has retracted its Quiet Revival report which claimed polling showed a surge in UK church-going among the young. YouGov, which ran the polling, now admits that it "failed to activate key quality control technologies" preventing bias. https://humanists.uk/2026/03/26/bible-society-retracts-false-quiet-revival-claims/26 Mar 2026 14:10 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3mhxrth4vas23https://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3mhxdt7jcu22cThe reason is all to do with data linkage - the new name of the game in UK statistics. I wrote about it last week here https://georginasturge.substack.com/p/the-silent-creep-of-data-linkage [contains quote post or other embedded content]26 Mar 2026 09:59 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3mhxdt7jcu22chttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3mhxdhghjf22cGreat news: 1.3 million people have been lifted out of poverty this morning! All thanks to a change in the statistics. After changing how income data is gathered, the DWP now believes it was over-estimating 'low income' levels by at least a million people in recent years, including 400k children.26 Mar 2026 09:53 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3mhxdhghjf22chttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3mhi4r5j3dk2qToday a legal instrument comes into force unsealing the NHS records of former GIDS patients, the children's gender dysphoria clinic, because adult clinics had refused to give the data voluntarily. Data linkage is a new frontier - should we be concerned? https://georginasturge.substack.com/p/the-silent-creep-of-data-linkage20 Mar 2026 08:43 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3mhi4r5j3dk2qhttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3mhfzxri37c2tNew piece on the silent creep of data linkage, the latest frontier for UK statistics. https://georginasturge.substack.com/p/the-silent-creep-of-data-linkage19 Mar 2026 12:48 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3mhfzxri37c2thttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3mhfqtorks22tNew Substack post just dropped 🙌 Data linkage is the new name of the game for UK statistics, but what does that mean for us as the subjects of that data? Is there any way that official use of the phrase "alternative to consent" is less sinister than it sounds? https://open.substack.com/pub/georginasturge/p/the-silent-creep-of-data-linkage https://open.substack.com/pub/georginasturge/p/the-silent-creep-of-data-linkage?r=2ut0af&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true19 Mar 2026 10:04 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3mhfqtorks22thttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3mhfpeiopqc2tThis is a very interesting piece from the Race Equality Foundation on the good that ethnicity data does & the complexities of collecting it. Brings up issues I covered in Sum of Us around how we decide on the categories for ethnicity and race. https://raceequalityfoundation.org.uk/blog/why-we-record-ethnicity/19 Mar 2026 09:38 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3mhfpeiopqc2thttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3mgrnxlpn422tThis is a good article from @freemovement.bsky.social making the point I've made elsewhere that Denmark's 'huge' reduction in asylum applications is just the fall from a short-lived spike in Syrians during the 2015-16 crisis. UK context is also totally different. https://freemovement.org.uk/attempt-deter-asylum-seekers-wont-work/11 Mar 2026 10:20 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3mgrnxlpn422thttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3meq6hsbcbk2oNew results from @natcen.bsky.social's British Social Attitudes survey show UK attitudes towards immigration are more divided than in the recent past. It's now a clean split where a third of people perceive it as 'bad', a third as 'good,' and a third have a neutral attitude towards it.13 Feb 2026 09:19 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3meq6hsbcbk2ohttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3meo6llts4c2ePoor ONS, their surveys are already suffering from non-response and now the BBC goes and puts it into our heads that their enumerators could be corporate spies 😅 https://blog.ons.gov.uk/2026/02/12/separating-fact-from-fiction-how-the-industry-of-survey-collection-is-far-more-than-a-bbc-plot-device/12 Feb 2026 14:16 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3meo6llts4c2ehttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3menv27ey5s2eInteresting and reminds me of similar findings from a recent study on migration. Using the exact same dataset, researchers who expressed different personal views about immigration came up with different results which tended to support their pre-existing beliefs. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adz7173 [contains quote post or other embedded content]12 Feb 2026 11:25 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3menv27ey5s2ehttps://bsky.app/profile/georginasturge.bsky.social/post/3mejucbe6hk22I actually didn’t realise the Bible Society had doubled down. There may have been a modest rise in young religiosity but we’re talking a percentage point or two. There is just no way the much higher BS poll results are accurate, sorry! BBC More or Less has been on it, case closed. [contains quote post or other embedded content]10 Feb 2026 21:01 +0000at://did:plc:7dwdjefylljf7dzdtr5onf7k/app.bsky.feed.post/3mejucbe6hk22