Regional Probabilistic Fertility Forecasting by Modeling Between-Country Correlations

摘要

BACKGROUNDThe United Nations (UN) Population Division produces probabilistic projections for the total fertility rate (TFR) using the Bayesian hierarchical model of , which produces predictive distributions of the TFR for individual countries. The UN is interested in publishing probabilistic projections for aggregates of countries, such as regions and trading blocs. This requires joint probabilistic projections of future country-specific TFRs, taking account of the correlations between them.