title: Bayesian demography: projecting the Iraqi Kurdish population, 1977-1990.
abstract: "Projecting populations that have sparse or unreliable data, such as those of many developing countries, presents a challenge to demographers. The assumptions that they make to project data-poor populations frequently fall into the realm of ¿educated guesses', and the resulting projections, often regarded as forecasts, are valid only to the extent that the assumptions on which they are based reasonably represent the past or future, as the case may be. These traditional projection techniques do not incorporate a demographer's assessment of uncertainty in the assumptions. Addressing the challenges of forecasting a data-poor population, we project the Iraqi Kurdish population using a Bayesian approach. This approach incorporates a demographer's uncertainty about past and future characteristics of the population in the form of elicited prior distributions."
authors.forename: B O
authors.initials: BO
authors.lastname: Daponte
authors.forename: J B
authors.initials: JB
authors.lastname: Kadane
authors.forename: L J
authors.initials: LJ
authors.lastname: Wolfson
mesh_terms: D001208:Asia; D001211:Asia, Western; D003469:Culture; D003710:Demography; D003906:Developing Countries; D005006:Ethnicity; D005544:Forecasting; D007493:Iraq; D008722:Methods; D008877:Middle East; D011153:Population; D011154:Population Characteristics; D012106:Research; D012107:Research Design; D013223:Statistics as Topic
keywords: Arab Countries; Asia; Cultural Background; Demographic Factors; Developing Countries; Error Sources; Estimation Technics; Ethnic Groups; Iraq; Measurement; Methodological Studies; Population; Population Characteristics; Population Forecast; Population Projection; Research Methodology; Western Asia