Stochastic population forecast of Ireland, 2007-2057

Agnes Romanini, Università di Bari
Anita Abramowska-Kmon, Warsaw School of Economics
Joanna Rozanska, Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Elsa Steichen, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

This paper presents a stochastic population forecast of Ireland for the next fifty years, taking into account the great economic and demographic changes of the last decades. During the 90s, Ireland has shown outstanding economic performances, attracting migrants in an unprecedented manner, especially after 2004. At the same time, the exceptional Irish fertility levelled off at 1.9 child per women and life expectancy rose steadily. Thus, uncertainty in future projection is high. Therefore, the stochastic population forecast will be conducted using cohort-component methods and deterministic jump-off population. The advantage of such forecast is that it produces probabilistic prediction intervals. The results show that the population will reach 7.6 millions in 2057, with a 75% growth and considerable migration effects during this period, a situation never faced by Ireland; and that population ageing will be a major challenge since the share of the elderly in total population will more than double.