Abstract
At the heart of our project on representing and understanding societal change in New Zealand since 1981 is the construction of a computer model. The key parameters of this model are estimated from the data sources outlined in the previous chapter, and the model reproduces the patterns of societal change over the period in question. What is the purpose of constructing such a representation of societal change in New Zealand since 1981 when we already have the source data that seems entirely and authoritatively descriptive of that process of change, courtesy of the Census? The purpose of this very substantial technical effort is to create a flexible model of that process the Census describes, a model that we will be able to work with for the sake of social and policy inquiry. In this chapter, we briefly outline the techniques available in this field, before embarking on a much more detailed discussion of our tool of choice – microsimulation modelling – and then going on to pick out the key features of the model we have constructed for our current purpose, SociaLab.
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Davis, P., Lay-Yee, R. (2019). SociaLab: A Dynamic Microsimulation Model. In: Simulating Societal Change. Computational Social Sciences. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04786-3_3
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