Evaluation of the accuracy of the population forecasts in the Czech Republic

Polina Bezushchenko

Master's thesis

Abstract:

Nowadays, population projections are widely used at the different levels of national planning as well as by businesses. For the last decade a lot of new projections have been released for the population of the Czech Republic up to 2101. The accuracy evaluation of the current projections can help policymakers to understand how the future population may unfold. Also, knowing the errors of the projections, the future projections can be improved. In this thesis several current population projections are evaluated against the reality with the help of the Keyfitz’s “Quality of Prediction Index” and the Mean Absolute Percentage Error. The evaluation was conducted for the projections published by the Czech Statistical Office, Eurostat, the United Nations and by individual researches Boris Burcin and Tomáš Kučera. The basic results and important findings are presented together with the description of the individual projections. The results reveal that the most accurate age groups are 10-19 and 60-69; the least accurate age groups besides old ages are 0-9 and 20-39. The most problematic parameters are net migration and life expectancy at 65. The accuracy of the prediction seems to be very high during the first 2 years after the publication not exceeding the deviation of 1%. The error starts to rise after 4 years elapsed from the projections’ release exceeding the deviation of 1% and more. The projection of Eurostat seems to be the most accurate one. To the contrary, the least accurate projection belongs to Burcin and Kučera.

Abstract:

Nowadays, population projections are widely used at the different levels of national planning as well as by businesses. For the last decade a lot of new projections have been released for the population of the Czech Republic up to 2101. The accuracy evaluation of the current projections can help policymakers to understand how the future population may unfold. Also, knowing the errors of the projections, the future projections can be improved. In this thesis several current population projections are evaluated against the reality with the help of the Keyfitz’s “Quality of Prediction Index” and the Mean Absolute Percentage Error. The evaluation was conducted for the projections published by the Czech Statistical Office, Eurostat, the United Nations and by individual researches Boris Burcin and Tomáš Kučera. The basic results and important findings are presented together with the description of the individual projections. The results reveal that the most accurate age groups are 10-19 and 60-69; the least accurate age groups besides old ages are 0-9 and 20-39. The most problematic parameters are net migration and life expectancy at 65. The accuracy of the prediction seems to be very high during the first 2 years after the publication not exceeding the deviation of 1%. The error starts to rise after 4 years elapsed from the projections’ release exceeding the deviation of 1% and more. The projection of Eurostat seems to be the most accurate one. To the contrary, the least accurate projection belongs to Burcin and Kučera.

Keywords

population projection, population forecast, forecast accuracy, accuracy evaluation, demographic development, Czech Republic, Keyfitz's “Quality of prediction index”, Mean Absolute Percentage Error

Keywords

population projection, population forecast, demographic development, Czech Republic, Keyfitz’s “Quality of prediction index”, Mean Absolute Percentage Error, accuracy evaluation, forecast accuracy

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 27. 9. 2018

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 7. 6. 2019
• Supervisor: Petr Mazouch
• Reader: Tomáš Fiala

Vysoká škola ekonomická v Praze

Master programme / field:
Kvantitativní metody v ekonomice / Official Statistics