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Measuring the accuracy of population projections: An application of exploratory data analysis

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  • Pflaumer, Peter

Abstract

The accuracy of U.N. population projections is examined. The goal is to measure the amount of uncertainty associated with past projections of the United Nations in order to provide a reaiistic measure of the uncertainty in the projection that the U.N. makes in the future. Various descriptive measures of the forecast error data set are presented and methods from exploratory data analysis and cluster analysis are applied. The data consists of the medium variant of projections made by the U.N. between 1960 and 1985 for 101 countries. The findings show that the forecasting performance is satisfactory for the majority of countries. However, relatively laxge forecast errors occurred mainly in African countries. In some African countries the population growth has been substantiaüy underestimated.

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  • Pflaumer, Peter, 1993. "Measuring the accuracy of population projections: An application of exploratory data analysis," Discussion Papers, Series II 199, University of Konstanz, Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) 178 "Internationalization of the Economy".
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:kondp2:199
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Pflaumer, Peter, 1992. "Forecasting US population totals with the Box-Jenkins approach," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 8(3), pages 329-338, November.
    2. Jöckel, Karl-Heinz & Pflaumer, Peter, 1984. "Calculating the variance of errors in population forecasting," Statistics & Probability Letters, Elsevier, vol. 2(4), pages 211-213, August.
    3. Pflaumer, Peter, 1988. "Confidence intervals for population projections based on Monte Carlo methods," International Journal of Forecasting, Elsevier, vol. 4(1), pages 135-142.
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    Keywords

    forecasting performance; cluster analysis;

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