# Statistical Methods for Population Projections

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON · 2021 · $362,372

## Abstract

Project Summary
The United Nations publishes updated estimates and projections of the populations of all the
world's countries, broken down by age and sex. These are widely used by international
organizations, governments, the private sector and researchers, for example for climate
modeling and for assessing progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals. The UN's
previous projections were deterministic, and under the previous grant, we developed a fully
probablistic projection methodology, which was adopted by the UN for its official projections for
all countries in 2015. The new projections changed the understanding of the outlook for
population, indicating that stabilization of world population is unlikely this century, largely
because of the slowdown in fertility decline in high-fertility countries.
We will improve our methodology by taking account of generalized HIV/AIDS epidemics. We will
also develop new methods that account for the evolution of smoking, a major factor for mortality.
Our methods are based on estimates of past population and vital rates, but these have
measurement error, particularly in the more than half of countries without good vital registration
system, We will extend our methods to take account of measurement error in estimating past
fertility rates. We will also assess the possible effects on fertility of major policy initiatives
focused on child survival, girl's education, family planning and the status of women in high
fertility countries
We will produce publicly available software for implementing our new methods. We will also
conduct training courses and continue to maintain an email list for users of the methods.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10192523
- **Project number:** 5R01HD070936-10
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON
- **Principal Investigator:** ADRIAN E RAFTERY
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $362,372
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2012-03-01 → 2024-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10192523

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10192523, Statistical Methods for Population Projections (5R01HD070936-10). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10192523. Licensed CC0.

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