Scotland�s population is at its highest for 25 years, with births outstripping deaths and more people coming to live here for the first time.

Scotland's population is at its highest for 25 years, with births outstripping deaths and more people coming to live here for the first time.

There were 5,144,200 people living in the country in June last year, according to an official estimate published yesterday, 27,300 more than a year before and the most since 1983.

Much of the rise came from the continuing waves of migrants, most from other parts of Britain and most far younger than Scotland's ageing indigenous population. Net inward migration levels were at their highest since the 1950s.

Duncan Macniven, Scotland's registrar general and the official behind the figures, yesterday said: "More than 63,000 people left Scotland - but nearly 90,000 came here, mostly from the rest of the UK."

Scotland's population is now officially estimated to be 1.6% higher than it was at the time of the last census, in 2001.

The rise marks an astonishing turnaround in the country's demographics. In 2001 there were barely five million people in Scotland and experts were predicting the figure would fall below that psychologically important mark. There are now 90,000 more people in Scotland than there were in 2002, when the population hit its lowest level since just after the Second World War and Scots continued to leave their country.

Finance Secretary John Swinney yesterday welcomed the upturn. "For over four decades Scotland has been a country of substantial net out-migration," he said. "Crucially, over the last 10 years in particular, our population growth has lagged well behind that of the UK.

"But these latest very positive population estimates show that we are beginning to turn the corner."

Over the year, 51,500 people came to Scotland from England, Wales and Northern Ireland while 42,700 left Scotland to go in the opposite direction. It is not known how many of those coming north were Scots returning home. The net influx of 8800 was about the same as the previous year although the numbers of people entering and leaving Scotland had both fallen.

Meanwhile, more than 37,800 people, including asylum seekers, came to Scotland from overseas and 21,000 left Scotland to go overseas.

The net influx of 16,800 is the highest ever and compares to an inflow of 12,700 in 2005-06.

The population of Scotland's cities edged up in the year, mostly thanks to migrants, both from the home nations and abroad. Glasgow's population - a subject of considerable dispute in the past - was officially estimated at 581,940 in June 2007, up one-fifth of one per cent over the year. Nearly 7000 people moved to the city from England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Slightly more came from the rest of the world.

Edinburgh grew even quicker, by 1% to 468,070, thanks to newcomers and a healthier birth-to-death ratio. Edinburgh is now 5% bigger than it was a decade ago.

Aberdeen was up 1.2% over the year at 209,260 and Dundee, which has suffered historic depopulation, lost just 20 people in 2006-2007, leaving its official population at 142,150.

The number of births in the year to June 30, 2007, was 1100 higher than the number of deaths. That was the first "natural" rise in population in Scotland since 1997. "Migrants helped increase the birth rate too," Mr Macniven said. "Mothers from Eastern Europe accounted for one in three of the increase in the number of births between 2006 and 2007, although only one in 50 of all births in Scotland was to a mother from Eastern Europe."

Women still outnumber men in Scotland. Only Moray and Shetland have more males than females. Officials, meanwhile, stress figures on migrations are only their best estimates, based on information from, for example, doctors' surgeries and limited surveys at airports. Scotland will next have a full census in 2011.