Student
Tom Wilson
Supervisor
Prof. Phil Rees
Dates
1st October 1997 - 30th September 2001
Grants
University of Leeds Studentship
Summary
Population projections have a wide variety of users. Projections for local authority areas are required by a large number of organisations for planning purposes: public sector bodies such as national and local government, health authorities and local education authorities, commercial organisations such as market research and utility companies, and others such as research institutes, charities and trade unions. Although subnational population projections for the United Kingdom have been produced by the government since the 1960s these official projections possess a number of limitations.
- Separate projections are made for each of the four countries of the UK using three different models. Thus they are inconsistent, and do not model migration flows between subnational areas in the different countries of the UK.
- Two of the three models are net migration models. Considerable research has shown these types of models to conceptually highly unsatisfactory. The third model, although multiregional, contains theoretical approximations which can be improved.
- All official models produce just a single scenario, which is trend-based. These trend-based models are used to inform local authority structure plans, and this ‘predict and provide’ process has come in for much criticism.
- Finally, no evidence is published to show that the official models have been validated by running them for a past period and checking the results against known data.
This PhD project aims to overcome these problems through the construction and application of a new subnational population projection model. The model will cover the whole UK at the unitary authority and district level (434 areas) using a transition accounts-based multiregional framework. A 1991-1998 validation check will be carried out. A number of alternative scenarios will be produced, both likely and illustrative. Whilst many population projections include alternative fertility and mortality scenarios, few consider migration scenarios, particularly internal migration. It is hoped that the production of internal migration scenarios will contribute to the important debate on the future population geography of the UK (including the well publicised and related issues of increasing household numbers, new housebuilding on brownfield land, new towns, and inner city regeneration). Some of the uncertainty inherent in population projection can be accommodated in this way, and the possibility of producing probabilistic projections containing confidence intervals will be investigated.
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