A New Approach to Probabilistic County Population Forecasting with an Example Application to West Texas

Abstract This paper shows how measures of uncertainty can be applied to existing subnational population forecasts using the 107 counties that make up West Texas as a case study. The measures of forecast uncertainty are relatively easy to calculate and meet several important criteria routinely applied by state and local demographers. We also report the results of two independent comparisons supporting the argument that our approach is valid. The paper concludes it is well-suited for developing probabilistic population forecasts in the United States and elsewhere.