Improvement and re-development of demography, migration and population and housing census statistics Feasibility study on monthly demographic balance estimates

ended

Population change is one of the topics attracting most public and policy interest nowadays. Increased user needs – as well recognized by the ESOPH framework under preparation – include more frequent data on demographic balances. When examining the possibilities to satisfy such user needs, components of demographic change should be approached separately: contrary to well recorded births and deaths, which might let official statisticians produce practically real-time vital events data, challenges of creating frequent and timely migration statistics are numerous. The objective of this proposal is to examine potential solutions to overcome such challenges. On the one hand, the HCSO proposes to enhance cooperation with providers of relevant data sources to improve access to administrative data on monthly migration flows. On the other hand, experiments will be carried out in order to develop early estimation methods of monthly migrations, appropriate for handling the uncertainties mostly stemming from the twelve months criterion of the intended/expected duration of stay of applying the usual residence concept to migration. The models trained by historical data will be tested and assessed from a quality point of view in order to assure high quality inputs for the production of monthly demographic balances in the future.