Forecast accuracy of australian subnational population projections

Despite the considerable resources devoted to making demographic projections in Australia over the past two decades, there have been few attempts to evaluate the performance of these projections in terms of forecast accuracy. This paper first considers the role of accuracy amongst other objectives of projection activity. Accepting accuracy as a legitimate goal, we then assess the performance of 48 sets of population projections and forecasts for states and territories of Australia prepared since 1970. Projection accuracy is assessed by reference to length of forecast horizon, population size and rate of growth. We also examine the main sources of forecast error in selected projections for each state and compare the performance of past projections with alternatives based on simple extrapolation of contemporary population trends.