Adrian E. Raftery, University of Washington, giving talk on "Bayesian Reconstruction of Past Populations for Developing and Developed Countries."
I will describe Bayesian population reconstruction, a new method for estimating past populations by age and sex, with fully probabilistic statements of uncertainty. It simultaneously estimates age-specific population counts, vital rates and net migration from fragmentary data while formally accounting for measurement error. As inputs, it takes initial bias-corrected estimates of age-specific population counts, vital rates and net migration. The output is a joint posterior probability distribution which yields fully probabilistic interval estimates of past vital rates and population numbers by age and sex. It is designed for the kind of data commonly collected in demographic surveys and censuses and can be applied to countries with widely varying levels of data quality. This is joint work with Mark Wheldon, Patrick Gerland, and Samuel Clark. [Census Collaborations: POP (Tori Velkoff, Jason Devine); CSRM (Joseph Schafer, Eric Slud)].