Abstract

Population projections are key for policy making and planning. Currently, most countries, and international organizations like the World Bank and the United Nations, produce population projections using the cohort-component method. While simple and applicable in absence of detailed data sources, the method is limited to projecting a population by age, sex, and very few additional variables, such as province or broad education categories. A more advanced—but still uncommon—approach involves dynamic micro-simulation models, where populations are represented by large samples of individual people and their life-courses over time. This approach is more complex, but has major advantages: it can produce detailed projections of a broad variety of individual characteristics, model realistic life-courses and their diversity, and support the modeling of interactions between people. Such models also support more detailed planning and policy development, and can provide the demographic core of more extensive socioeconomic models. While currently applied almost exclusively in the developed world, the benefits are also evident in the context of developing countries.

This report helps demystify micro-simulation for population projections and demonstrate its feasibility in the developing world. Dynamic micro-simulation is now feasible at a reasonable cost due to advanced and freely available programming tools, as well as improvements in the availability, quality, and standardization of micro-level data. At the core of the report is an application example for Mauritania, which introduces statistical methods used in micro-simulation and micro-simulation programming techniques, and can be adapted and replicated for other countries. The model has an intuitive graphical user interface and runs on a standard PC, and the report includes step-by step documentation of its computer implementation. Its code and statistical analysis files are available to model builders, who can use them as a textbook and toolbox for micro-simulation model development and implementation.

Keywords: Micro-simulation, Population Projection, Development, Mauritania, Dynamis