bayesPop-package: Probabilistic Population Projection

Description

The package allows to generate population projections for all countries of the world using several probabilistic components, such as total fertility rate (TFR) and life expectancy. Generating subnational projections is also supported.

Arguments

Author

Hana Sevcikova, Adrian Raftery, Thomas Buettner

Maintainer: Hana Sevcikova <hanas@uw.edu>

Details

The main function is called pop.predict. It uses trajectories of TFR from the bayesTFR package and life expectancy from the bayesLife package and for each trajectory it computes a population projection using the cohort component method. It results in probabilistic age and sex specific projections. Various plotting functions are available for results visualization (pop.trajectories.plot, pop.pyramid, pop.trajectories.pyramid, pop.map), as well as a summary function. Aggregations can be derived using pop.aggregate. An expression language is available to obtain the distribution of various population quantities.

Subnational projections can be generated using pop.predict.subnat. Function pop.aggregate.subnat aggregates such projections.

References

H. Sevcikova, A. E. Raftery (2016). bayesPop: Probabilistic Population Projections. Journal of Statistical Software, 75(5), 1-29. tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.18637/jss.v075.i05")

A. E. Raftery, N. Li, H. Sevcikova, P. Gerland, G. K. Heilig (2012). Bayesian probabilistic population projections for all countries. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109:13915-13921. tools:::Rd_expr_doi("10.1073/pnas.1211452109")

P. Gerland, A. E. Raftery, H. Sevcikova, N. Li, D. Gu, T. Spoorenberg, L. Alkema, B. K. Fosdick, J. L. Chunn, N. Lalic, G. Bay, T. Buettner, G. K. Heilig, J. Wilmoth (2014). World Population Stabilization Unlikely This Century. Science 346:234-237.

H. Sevcikova, N. Li, V. Kantorova, P. Gerland and A. E. Raftery (2015). Age-Specific Mortality and Fertility Rates for Probabilistic Population Projections. arXiv:1503.05215. https://arxiv.org/abs/1503.05215

Examples

Run this code

if (FALSE) {
sim.dir <- tempfile()
# Generates population projection for one country
country <- "Netherlands"
pred <- pop.predict(countries=country, output.dir=sim.dir)
summary(pred, country)
pop.trajectories.plot(pred, country)
dev.off()
pop.trajectories.plot(pred, country, sum.over.ages=TRUE)
pop.pyramid(pred, country)
pop.pyramid(pred, country, year=2100, age=1:26)
unlink(sim.dir, recursive=TRUE)
}

# Here are commands needed to run probabilistic projections
# from scratch, i.e. including TFR and life expectancy.
# Note that running the first four commands 
# (i.e. predicting TFR and life expectancy) can take 
# LONG time (up to several days; see below for possible speed-up). 
# For a toy simulation, set the number of iterations (iter) 
# to a small number.
if (FALSE) {
sim.dir.tfr <- "directory/for/TFR"
sim.dir.e0 <-  "directory/for/e0"
sim.dir.pop <- "directory/for/pop"

# Estimate TFR parameters (speed-up by including parallel=TRUE)
run.tfr.mcmc(iter="auto", output.dir=sim.dir.tfr, seed=1)

# Predict TFR (if iter above < 4000, reduce burnin and nr.traj accordingly)
tfr.predict(sim.dir=sim.dir.tfr, nr.traj=2000, burnin=2000)

# Estimate e0 parameters (females) (speed-up by including parallel=TRUE)
# Can be run independently of the two commands above
run.e0.mcmc(sex="F", iter="auto", output.dir=sim.dir.e0, seed=1)

# Predict female and male e0	
# (if iter above < 22000, reduce burnin and nr.traj accordingly)
e0.predict(sim.dir=sim.dir.e0, nr.traj=2000, burnin=20000)

# Population prediction
pred <- pop.predict(output.dir=sim.dir.pop, verbose=TRUE, 
    inputs = list(tfr.sim.dir=sim.dir.tfr, 
                  e0F.sim.dir=sim.dir.e0, e0M.sim.dir="joint_"))
pop.trajectories.plot(pred, "Madagascar", nr.traj=50, sum.over.ages=TRUE)
pop.trajectories.table(pred, "Madagascar")
}