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Population Projections for All Countries

When

Thursday, May 29, 2014, 00:00

Where

The Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2

Tickets

General Admission Free

The lecture will be given by Professor Adrian E. Raftery, Professor of Statistics at the University of Washington.

Projections of countries' future populations, broken down by age and sex, are widely used for planning and research. They are mostly done deterministically, but there is a widespread need for probabilistic projections. This lecture will describe a Bayesian statistical method for probabilistic population projections for all countries. These new methods have been used by the United Nations to produce their most recent population projections for all countries.

The results suggest that world population will increase more than had recently been believed likely, reaching between 9 and 13 billion by the end of the century, with no end to population growth this century. The population of Africa, in particular, is likely to grow, from about

1 billion now to between 3 and 5 billion. The number of working age people per retired person will probably decline dramatically in most countries over the coming decades. The results also suggest that the current UN high and low variants underestimate uncertainty for high fertility countries, and overstate uncertainty for low fertility countries, mostly in Europe. Professor Raftery will comment on implications for carbon emissions this century.

This event is run in partnership with the Irish Statistical Association and the Royal Irish Academy.

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