The ESRC-funded FertilityTrends project is organising two free, half-day, virtual training workshops this Autumn on methods for Fertility Analysis and Projection. Participants can attend either or both of the workshops, which will be held on Zoom. The workshops contain theoretical and practical components, with computer demos performed in R (code will be made available). The workshops are aimed at national and local government statisticians, social and demographic researchers, and others who are interested in understanding how to analyse fertility trends and make projections for the future. Situations where this is important include planning maternity services and anticipating demand for school places.
Fertility Analysis by Birth Order
Friday 30th September 2022, 14:00-17:00 UK time
Background
The Total Fertility Rate (TFR) is a commonly used measure to study changes in fertility levels over time. Aggregate fertility measures are simple and useful summary measures. However, they provide little information about underlying childbearing behaviour of women (and men). For example, fertility may decline over time because the share of childless women will increase or because the average family size of mothers will decline.
Objectives
The workshop will introduce parity-specific fertility measures and methods to calculate fertility by birth order. It will introduce data sources and will demonstrate the calculation of fertility rates by parity using individual-level data. The majority of the demonstrations will be performed in R and relevant code will be made available.
Audience
The workshop is aimed at national and local government statisticians, social and demographic researchers, and others interested in the methods of fertility measurement.
Parity-specific Fertility Projections
Friday 7th October 2022, 14:00-17:00 UK time
Background
Existing fertility projection models tend to use data on total births rather than disaggregating by birth order. However, there are many reasons to incorporate parity information, not least that it allows closer control of the population at risk of each birth order. A parity-specific approach could therefore lead to more reliable fertility projections and enable more tailored policy solutions. This is the second in a series of two training workshops, the first on “Fertility Analysis by Birth Order”. Attendance at the first workshop is not a formal prerequisite, but it would provide useful background knowledge.
Objectives
The workshop will summarise existing fertility projection methods and will then introduce data sources and a method that can be used to obtain Bayesian parity-specific fertility projections. This method will be demonstrated in the practical session.
Audience
The workshop is aimed at national and local government statisticians, particularly those who contribute to population projections; social and demographic researchers; and others interested in the application of sophisticated statistical methods to demographic forecasting.