Population Projections

This 2-day course introduces the basic elements of population projections. Predicting the future population is one of the most frequently requested outputs from clients:

• Governments on future for roads, schools, medical personnel, tax policies, etc.;
• Businesses: future market size;
• Demography: to analyse the implications of a certain set of demographic parameters for population size, composition, and growth.

This short course presents the cohort component method, the methodology used in all statistical offices around the world as well as the United Nations to estimate future population. This methodology will be developed and demonstrated in class, using national and international demographic datasets.

Topics

1. Basic demographic components (fertility, migration and mortality).
2. The Cohort Component Method (CCM).
3. Matrix notation and use in the CCM.
4. Scenarios of Population Projections.

Learning outcomes

Upon successful completion, participants will have the knowledge and skills to:

1. Work confidently within the R environment to produce basic future population projections

2. Import and manipulate international datasets on fertility, mortality and population counts

3. Create visualisations of the obtained projections

Prerequisites

Participants are advised to have the free software R and R-studio installed in their laptops ahead of the course: https://www.r-project.org/ and/or https://www.rstudio.com/

No previous knowledge in R-programming is required, but participants wanting extra information on the software are advised to consult some of the available online ice-breakers: https://www.youtube.com/c/rprogramming101

Dates:

Thursday 12 June - 9.00 am to Friday 13 June - 5.30 pm

Online option is available, please indicate this in your registration.