An Overview of Population Projections—Methodological Concepts, International Data Availability, and Use Cases

Abstract

Population projections serve various actors at subnational, national, and international levels as a quantitative basis for political and economic decision-making. Usually, the users are no experts in statistics or forecasting and therefore lack the methodological and demographic background to completely understand methods and limitations behind the projections they use to inform further analysis. Our contribution primarily targets that readership. Therefore, we give a brief overview of different approaches to population projection and discuss their respective advantages and disadvantages, alongside practical problems in population data and forecasting. Fundamental differences between deterministic and stochastic approaches are discussed, with special emphasis on the advantages of stochastic approaches. Next to selected projection data available to the public, we show central areas of application of population projections, with an emphasis on Germany.

Keywords

• demographic trends
• macroeconomic effects and forecasts
• labor force and employment size and structure
• forecasting and simulation: models and applications
• stochasticity in forecasting
• frequentist and Bayesian methods