10 Facts: The World’s Newest (Potential) Nation
An independent Scotland would have slightly more people than Turkmenistan.
September 17, 2014
1. If Scotland declares its independence from the UK on September 18, the new country will have a population of just 5.2 million people.
2. About a fifth of Scotland’s population live in just two cities — Glasgow, its largest city, and Edinburgh, its capital city.
3. As an independent nation, Scotland would rank as the world’s 116th largest – behind Turkmenistan (5.3 million) and just ahead of Norway (5.1 million).
4. Scotland would rank ahead of 78 of the UN’s current 193 member states in terms of population.
5. The average population of those 78 countries, based on UN estimates for 2014, is just over 1.6 million.
6. The combined population of these countries — 127.8 million — is in fact only about twice the current population of the UK.
7. Scotland’s departure would reduce the population of the UK — already the smallest nation of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council — to 58.3 million.
8. The other permanent members of the Security Council — each with veto power over UN resolutions — are France, Russia, the United States and China.
9. While a reduced UK will still be comparable in size to France (64.6 million), it will be significantly smaller than the other three members.
10. The smaller UK will have just over a third of Russia’s population (142 million), a sixth of the United States’ 322 million — and about one-24th of China’s 1.39 billion.
Source: United Nations Population Division’s World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision (medium fertility estimate for 2014) and Scotland.org
Takeaways
A fifth of Scotland's population lives in two cities -- Glasgow, its largest city, and Edinburgh, its capital city.
The smaller UK will have just over a third of Russia's population, a sixth of the US’s and one-24th of China's.
As an independent nation, Scotland would rank the world's 116th largest - behind Turkmenistan (5.3 million).
