Failure and success: in-sample and out-of-sample demographic forecasts

Nico Keilman, University of Oslo

There is a growing literature on the quality of population forecasts. All of these forecasts relate to the future, and their accuracy can be established ex post facto. However, a large literature is concerned with explanation and prediction of current, not future behaviour. This paper explores the predictive success of those in-sample predictions. Likelihood statistics for published life course analyses are investigated. To what extent does predictive success depend on subject matter, on sample size, on type of dependent variable?