Don’t Panic: Population Projection is Not a Crystal Ball
Population panic – worries about “depopulation” linked to low birth rates – has become pervasive, with dire predictions in both the short and long term. Yet demographers like us – experts who explicitly study population size, composition, and structure – are generally not highly concerned. Why is this? It’s because we understand the strengths and limitations of population projections. Projections can accurately describe how populations will change if we know future birth, death, and migration rates. But demographers are well aware that they don’t have a crystal ball – we can't fully anticipate economic shifts, political changes, global events, or how future generations will respond to their changing worlds. That’s why the farther we project from the present, the less accurate those projections are likely to be.
Authors
- Alison Gemmill (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5879-9730)
- Sarah R. Hayford (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0000-7774)
- Shelley Clark (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6783-8743)
- Karen Benjamin Guzzo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9718-8465)
- Laura Lindberg (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2660-9407)
- Leslie Root (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7307-0734)
- Amanda Jean Stevenson (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5985-1924)
- Jennifer Dowd
Publication Details
- Published
- 2025-08-21
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/mq978_v1
- Primary Topic
- Insurance, Mortality, Demography, Risk Management
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00
Funders
- Ohio State University
- Johns Hopkins University
- Hopkins Population Center, Johns Hopkins University
- National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
- Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development
- Carolina Population Center, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill