Empirical Prediction Intervals for County Population Forecasts

Population forecasts entail a significant amount of uncertainty, especially for long-range horizons and for places with small or rapidly changing populations. This uncertainty can be dealt with by presenting a range of projections or by developing statistical prediction intervals. The latter can be based on models that incorporate the stochastic nature of the forecasting process, on empirical analyses of past forecast errors, or on a combination of the two. In this article, we develop and test prediction intervals based on empirical analyses of past forecast errors for counties in the United States. Using decennial census data from 1900 to 2000, we apply trend extrapolation techniques to develop a set of county population forecasts; calculate forecast errors by comparing forecasts to subsequent census counts; and use the distribution of errors to construct empirical prediction intervals. We find that empirically-based prediction intervals provide reasonably accurate predictions of the precision of population forecasts, but provide little guidance regarding their tendency to be too high or too low. We believe the construction of empirically-based prediction intervals will help users of small-area population forecasts measure and evaluate the uncertainty inherent in population forecasts and plan more effectively for the future.     

Can We Compare Life Satisfaction Between Nationalities? Evaluating Actual and Imagined Situations

Do differences in reported life satisfaction between societies reflect real differences or do they reflect cultural differences in the way people rate their experiences? Study 1 showed that imagining better or worse life situations affected student respondents’ ratings of their own life satisfaction, as predicted by range–frequency theory. Study 2 investigated how German and Polish students rated their actual life satisfaction and how satisfied they would be under three imagined scenarios. Study 3 similarly compared Danish and Hungarian students. Both studies found significant differences in the rating of the hypothetical situations, and moderate correlations between ratings of satisfaction in the hypothetical situations and reality, but in neither study were national differences in actual satisfaction predicted by differences in hypothetical satisfaction. Overall, the results suggest that national differences in rated life satisfaction are real rather than reflecting differences in how satisfaction is rated.     

Using Qualitative Methods with Poor Children in Urban Ethiopia: Opportunities &; Challenges

This paper discusses the advantages and challenges of using qualitative methods to elicit poor children’s perspectives about threats and positive influences on their wellbeing. It draws on research carried out by the author on the subjective experiences of poor children in Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia in terms of their understandings of wellbeing, threats to their wellbeing, coping strategies, and positive or resilient outcomes. After a brief introduction reviewing previous approaches to child poverty in general and research on Ethiopian children in particular, the second section describes the research setting and the ethical approach to the study, which influenced how consent was obtained and the data analysed. The paper then describes the use of qualitative methods such as semi-structured interviews, draw-and-tell, and diaries, the kinds of data they produced and the methodological and ethical dilemmas and tensions encountered in using them. It concludes that despite the challenges qualitative methods are invaluable in order to understand what poor children see as threats and positive influences on their wellbeing.

Life Course Perspectives on the Links Between Poverty and Obesity During the Transition to Young Adulthood

Increasing obesity among Americans is a serious issue in the US, especially in the pediatric and young adult population. We use a longitudinal design to examine the relationship between childhood poverty/welfare receipt and obesity onset and continuity from adolescence into young adulthood using three waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. We include multiple measures of disadvantage that co-occur with poverty and model potential mediating mechanisms within a life course framework. We find a significant effect of poverty/welfare receipt in childhood on obesity outcomes for females, but not for males. However, other measures of socioeconomic disadvantage such as neighborhood poverty, and low parental education are related to obesity in both males and females. Poverty may impact female obesity through the mediating effects of physical activity, inadequate sleep, skipping breakfast and certain forms of parental monitoring, while race is an important confounder of poverty’s influence. This paper highlights the important influence of poverty and other aspects of social disadvantage on obesity outcomes during this critical transition to adulthood. Implications of this research include physical activity and parenting interventions for low-income youth. In addition, governmental efforts should be made to increase physical activity opportunities in poor neighborhoods.

Large,But Adaptable? A Successful Population Policy and Its Long Term Effects

A restrictive population policy led to almost doubling the number of newborns from one year to another in Romania in the 1960s. Twenty years later, this large generation (of women) enters a marriage market with few eligible older mates, in a society where marriage is a must. In this article, I analyze this social experiment within the broader frame of the marriage squeeze/two sex models. Using various data from censuses and surveys, I argue that the marriage market is flexible even when is confronted with disproportionately large cohorts. If the social pressure toward marriage is strong, the marriage rates do not necessarily fall, but the mating age patterns change.