Rationale, Terminology, Scope

Population projections can be used for a variety of purposes: forecasting future population change, analyzing the determinants of population change, presenting alternative scenarios of future population change, promoting specific agendas, sounding warnings, and providing a base for making other types of projections. In this chapter we describe several alternative approaches to making population projections, discuss the various roles they can play, and present several illustrations of the use of population projections in real-world decision making. We discuss our reasons for writing this book and describe its geographic focus, coverage, and target audience. We believe this book will help practitioners decide what data sources to use, what methods to apply, and what problems to watch out for when making population projections. It will also give data users the tools they need to evaluate population projections and decide how they can best be used.

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