Can international migration forecasting be improved? The case of Australia

Tom Wilson
Additional contact information
Tom Wilson: Charles Darwin University , Australia

Migration Letters, 2017, vol. 14, issue 2, 285-299

Abstract: In the first decade of the current century Australia experienced a huge increase in net international (overseas) migration. All demographic forecasts failed to predict this change. The aim of this paper is to assess past net overseas migration forecasts for Australia to quantify the extent of the forecasting challenge, and suggest ways in which improvements might be made. Official net overseas migration forecasts for the past four decades were assessed against subsequently published migration estimates. Mostly they proved highly inaccurate, both for individual years and cumulatively over longer periods. It is suggested that: (1) greater use be made of a detailed migration data source which provides migration estimates by visa/citizenship category, and (2) a combined migration forecasting approach, which draws strength from several complementary methods, is developed. Progress in these two areas offers the potential to improve the accuracy and utility of Australia’s overseas migration forecasts.

Keywords: Net overseas migration; forecast error; migration forecasts; combining methods; Australia (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journal.tplondon.com//index.php/ml/article/viewFile/708/569 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:mig:journl:v:14:y:2017:i:2:p:285-299

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://migrationletters.com/

Access Statistics for this article

Migration Letters is currently edited by Kittisak Jermsittiparsert

More articles in Migration Letters from Migration Letters
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ML ().