Forecasting the German population with Monte Carlo methods.

Abstract

"This paper presents an approach of constructing confidence intervals by means of Monte Carlo simulation. This technique attempts to incorporate the uncertainty involved in projecting the [West] German population by letting the fertility, mortality and net immigration rates vary as a random variable with a specific distribution. Since fertility and migration are by far the most volatile, and therefore, the most critical components to population forecasting, this technique has the potential of accounting for this uncertainty, if the subjective distributions are specified with enough care."