| Abstract: | This paper demonstrates and evaluates two different but complementary methodologies of small area forecasting in a rural area some 80 km north of Adelaide. The first approach forecasts overall population trends using a sector-by-sector appraisal of the growth/decline prospects of each economic sector based on detailed field surveys carried out in 1968 and 1970. The second approach was to use the readily available 1971 census and corresponding vital statistics data to project the population of the study area using a simple cohort-component projection methodology. Both approaches made forecasts of expected population levels by 1980, and in that year the authors conducted a resurvey of the same study area. The article demonstrates the need for, and results of, regular updating of the assumptions on which population forecasts are made, for the period 1968–1980 includedan unexpected revival of the farm economy as well as the onset of the international urban-rural migration flow of the ‘population turnaround’. Neither of these trends had been foreseen in the initial forecasts; their effects are shown in the results of the 1980 resurvey, and the utility of the forecasting methodologies is discussed in the light of these findings. |
