Competing Methodologies in the Netherlands

Abstract

At the end of the First World War, geometrical extrapolation of total population was still the usual approach; that was the case both in the Netherlands and elsewhere. The demographic predictions of Cannan, Fahlbeck and Westergaard produced in the preceding period were isolated occurrences. These forecasts had not yet found a direct following and it may well be assumed that knowledge of their innovations was restricted to a small circle of economists and statisticians. Methodological innovation had to depart from geometrical extrapolation. The 1920s and 1930s were to develop into the period in which modern population forecasting reached its full growth. That demographic forecasting was to become the new standard forecasting method of the national population could not have been predicted from its pre-war history. But the promise of its development was already present in the few well founded examples of geometric population growth forecasts: Rückert’s municipal population forecast published in 1917 (which is discussed in Chapter 6) and Rooy’s national population forecast of 1921. Rooy’s forecast is of particular interest because it had to do with a societal core issue of the post-war period: The housing shortage.