Scotland's Carers update release: June 2026

Background

The estimates in this update were produced using the Scottish Government’s Scottish Health Survey and the 2024 mid-year population estimates published by National Records of Scotland.

Methodology

The number of carers living in Scotland was estimated by applying the percentage of the population who were estimated to be carers in the Scottish Health Survey (figures for 2021-2024 combined to give a large enough sample) to the 2024 mid-year population estimates, which produced the figures below:

Total estimated number of carers: 722,000

Estimated number of adult carers (aged 18+): 699,000

Estimated number of young carers (aged 4-17): 23,000

It is important to note that as the Scottish Health Survey is a sample survey, these estimates have associated confidence intervals which need to be taken into consideration. Confidence intervals span the range of values in which the true value is likely to lie. For 2021-2024, the confidence intervals around the main estimate of 722,000 suggest there are estimated to be between 679,000 and 765,000 unpaid carers living in Scotland.

Care should be taken when comparing estimates over time, as when even small percentage changes are applied to the Scottish population estimates it can lead to sizeable changes in the estimated number of carers.

Other sources

The Scottish Survey Core Questions (SSCQ), which pool the samples from the Scottish Health Survey (SHeS), Scottish Crime and Justice Survey (SCJS) and the Scottish Household Survey (SHS), give slightly higher figures for the percentage of the population estimated to be carers. However, these figures relate to people aged 16+ only.

During 2024, an estimated 17.9% of people provided unpaid care according to the SSCQ. This would be equivalent to around 832,000 people aged 16+ providing unpaid care.

The higher figures in the SSCQ appear to be driven by the higher percentage of carers being reported in the Scottish Household Survey. An extract from the SSCQ 2024 report explains this further:

Table A.4: Provides unpaid care by source survey (row % and margin of error)

The three surveys produce somewhat different estimates of the rate of the provision of unpaid care for those aged 16 and above. SHS reports the highest level, followed by SCJS and SHeS. The confidence intervals on estimates from SCJS and SHS overlap and do not represent a significant difference, whereas the SHeS estimate is significantly lower than the other surveys.

The Scottish Health Survey (SHeS) is the only national source which includes information on people under the age of 16 providing unpaid care apart from Scotland’s Census. However, people providing low levels of care each week are less likely to be identified in the census and it may be the case that one person will answer the census questionnaire for the whole household.  This person may not be aware of caring activity going on elsewhere in the household or may feel uncomfortable explaining that someone else in the household provides care for them. As such, the Scottish Health Survey provides what we consider here to be the best estimate of the number of carers for all ages (including children) in Scotland.