Subnational Probabilistic Population Forecasts: the Example of Australia

The variability of demographic trends at the subnational scale, particularly internal and international migration, renders subnational population forecasting more difficult than at the national scale. Illustrating the uncertainty of the demographic future for subnational regions is therefore a crucial element of any set of subnational population forecasts. However, subnational forecasts are currently prepared using deterministic models which fail to properly address the issue of demographic uncertainty. The traditional high, medium and low variants approach employed by many national statistical offices poses a number of problems. Probabilistic population forecasting models have the potential to overcome many of these problems, but these models have so far been limited to national level forecasts. This paper reports a first attempt to implement a probabilistic approach subnational population forecasting model in a multiregional projection framework. The paper sets out the forecasting framework, outlines the approach adopted to formulate each of the assumptions and presents probabilistic forecasts for 2002-51 for Queensland and the rest of Australia. The forecasts show a two thirds probability that Queensland's population in 2051 will be between 6.5 and 7.5 million whilst the same range for the rest of the country is 19.7 and 22.5 million. The forecasts quantify to what extent greater uncertainty exists about the demographic future at the subnational compared to the national scale.