Wood's Method -- a Method for Fitting Leslie Matrices from Age-Sex Population Data, with some Practical Applications
Year: 2013
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This dissertation is dedicated to an exploration of "Wood's Method" -- a novel approach tofitting demographic transition matrices to age and sex population count data.Demographic transition matrices, otherwise known as "Leslie matrices," are extensivelyused to forecast population by age, sex, and other characteristics. Our implementation ofWood's Method simplifies the creation of age and sex population forecasts greatly byreducing the amount of data necessary to create a demographic transition matrix.Furthermore, the method can be used to infer a demographic component of change (one ofmigration, fertility, or mortality) if the other two components are specified.In Chapter One, we introduce Wood's Method, as well as showing some illustrativeexamples. In Chapter Two, we evaluate the accuracy of Wood's Method by crossvalidatingage and sex specific forecasts for 3,120 US counties. In Chapter Three, wepresent a simpler, alternative derivation of Wood's Method with an extensive example andshow some extensions to the method made possible by this new formulation. In ChapterFour, we use the method to examine migration rates at the US County level and showimportant results regarding clustering of migration. Each chapters is independent of theothers, but should be read in order.To our knowledge, this is the first time Wood's Method has been used for forecastinghuman populations. We hope to show its viability as a forecasting and analysis methodand sketch directions for further research.
Author: W. Webb Sprague
Language: English
Subfield: Demography
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2220947858