Integrated Local Demographic Forecasts Constrained by the Supply of Housing or Jobs: Practice in the UK

Abstract

Demographic forecasting models that integrate population, housing and jobs aim to help planning in two ways. First, the models describe the future needs of the population, with a range of scenarios reflecting the continuation of recent experience and uncertainty about which assumptions best reflect that experience. These models apply the standard mathematics of demographic cohorts and their change through births, deaths and migration, and of derived forecasts which apply age-sex specific household headship rates and economic activity rates to the future population. Second, the models are extended to calculate the impact of planned developments that will change the population by attracting or deterring people at a different rate from recent experience. This chapter focuses on the need for both types of forecast scenario in the context of local development plans which are required throughout the UK. It provides the mathematics to calculate migration in a forecast which has imposed a constraint or target future number of jobs or housing units. These balancing models are known as dwelling-led or housing-led forecasts in the UK, and are commonly used in the planning industry though seldom documented. The chapter includes an example application and discusses further developments.