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 Population Projections

United Nations / US Census Bureau / World Bank

There are three main sites which provide population projection data for nearly all of the world's main countries, one provided by the United Nations, one by the US Census Bureau and the third by the World Bank.  The sites are very different, and as we will examine briefly below, at least under some circumstances offer markedly different results. To see examples of the level of variation look at Data Samples . A fourth organization, the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis  (IIASA) produces projections for 13 major world regions, an article explaining their projections as well as other articles analysing the the methodologies used in the four sets of projections is available at Population Projection Articles .

United Nations, World Population Prospects -- The United Nations site is the most flexible. It provides a data base which permits the selection of projections for up to five countries and up to five variables (for example population, urban population, rural population) per search for the period 2000 to 2050. The site also allows the data to be project under a several different assumptions. The page also provides detailed country profiles under a number of assumptions as well as descriptions of the assumptions and a glossary of definitions of the indicators. The main page is at http://esa.un.org/unpp/ . This main page has a table of contents on the left which provides access to two data bases, each with different sets of indicators as well as the detailed pages described above. During testing of the site there was an annoying and intermittent problem with "Panel 2--Detailed Data" in which the lookup tables for variables and country/region froze. It was necessary to click the red question mark at the top of the lookup table to unfreeze them.

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US Census Bureau --The US Census Bureau provides a wide range of materials including a downloadable database of demographic data including projections to 2050.  The main page giving access to the various systems is http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idbnew.html . Among the selections available are 1) Summary Demographic Data which provides a printable report giving data on one country which you select , 2) Online Access which allows you to select one table of indicators (which may be downloaded as a .csv file) for one or more countries and for multiple years from 1950 to 2050, 3) Online Demographic Aggregation which allows you to select specific indicators for regions and countries for multiple years, the tables may be printed or downloaded, 4) Population Pyramids which draws population pyramids for the countries and years selected, 5) Countries Ranked by Total Population which allows you to find the largest countries from 1950 to 2050 and 6) Download IDB Program and Data to PC which gives instructions for downloading the data base and installing it to a PC (we have not tested this)

World Bank -- The World Bank provides a data base of population projections by country at http://devdata.worldbank.org/hnpstats/DPselection.asp which provides downloadable data. The data includes estimated age/sex distributions to 2090 as well as other demographic indicators.

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