A brief guide to producing a national population projection

Abstract

Background  There are surprisingly few resources available which offer an introductory guide to preparing a national population projection using a cohort-component model. Many demography textbooks cover projections quite briefly, and many academic papers on projections focus on advanced technical issues. Aims  The aim of this paper is to provide a short and accessible guide to producing a national-scale population projection using the cohort-component model. Data and methods  The paper describes the cohort-component model from a population accounting perspective, presents all the necessary projection calculations, and covers the key steps which form part of the projections preparation proc..