Forecast accuracy hardly improves with method complexity when completing cohort fertility.

ABSTRACT: Forecasts of completed fertility predict how many children will be born on average by women over their entire reproductive lifetime. These forecasts are important in informing public policy and influencing additional research in the social sciences. However, nothing is known about how to choose a forecasting method from a large basket of variants. We identified 20 major methods, with 162 variants altogether. The approaches range from naive freezing of current age-specific fertility rates to methods that use statistically sophisticated techniques or are grounded in demographic theory. We assess each method by evaluating the overall accuracy and if provided, uncertainty estimates using fertility data of all available birth cohorts and countries of the Human Fertility Database, which covers 1

SUBMITTER: Bohk-Ewald C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6140540 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature