Statistical Science

Bayesian Population Projections for the United Nations

Adrian E. Raftery, Leontine Alkema, and Patrick Gerland

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Abstract

The United Nations regularly publishes projections of the populations of all the world’s countries broken down by age and sex. These projections are the de facto standard and are widely used by international organizations, governments and researchers. Like almost all other population projections, they are produced using the standard deterministic cohort-component projection method and do not yield statements of uncertainty. We describe a Bayesian method for producing probabilistic population projections for most countries which are projections that the United Nations could use. It has at its core Bayesian hierarchical models for the total fertility rate and life expectancy at birth. We illustrate the method and show how it can be extended to address concerns about the UN’s current assumptions about the long-term distribution of fertility. The method is implemented in the R packages bayesTFR, bayesLife, bayesPop and bayesDem.

Article information

Source
Statist. Sci. Volume 29, Number 1 (2014), 58-68.

Dates
First available in Project Euclid: 9 May 2014

Permanent link to this document
http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.ss/1399645729

Digital Object Identifier
doi:10.1214/13-STS419

Mathematical Reviews number (MathSciNet)
MR3201847

Zentralblatt MATH identifier
1332.62428

Keywords
Bayesian hierarchical model cohort component projection method double logistic function Leslie matrix life expectancy total fertility rate

Citation

Raftery, Adrian E.; Alkema, Leontine; Gerland, Patrick. Bayesian Population Projections for the United Nations. Statist. Sci. 29 (2014), no. 1, 58--68. doi:10.1214/13-STS419. http://projecteuclid.org/euclid.ss/1399645729.


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