Conditional Probabilistic Population Forecasting

Warren Sanderson, Sergei Scherbov, Brian O'Neill and Wolfgang Lutz

No 303, VID Working Papers from Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna

Abstract: Since policy-makers often prefer to think in terms of alternative scenarios, the question has arisen as to whether it is possible to make conditional population forecasts in a probabilistic context. This paper shows that it is both possible and useful to make these forecasts. We do this with two different kinds of examples. The first is the probabilistic analog of deterministic scenario analysis. Conditional probabilistic scenario analysis is essential for policy-makers because it allows them to answer “what if” type questions properly when outcomes are uncertain. The second is a new category that we call “future jump-off date forecasts”. Future jump-off date forecasts are valuable because they show policy-makers the likelihood that crucial features of today’s forecasts will also be present in forecasts made in the future.

Pages: 15 pages
Date: 2003-06
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.oeaw.ac.at/fileadmin/subsites/Institut ... _Papers/WP2003_3.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:vid:wpaper:0303

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in VID Working Papers from Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bernhard Rengs ().