Demographic Tool & Database for Households Forecasting

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Our new method for household forecasting, known as ProFamy, has substantial merits as compared to the classic headship-rate method, which is not linked to demographic rates, projects a few household types only without size information, and deals with household "heads" but not other household members. ProFamy uses demographic rates as input and forecasts much more detailed household types and sizes, and living arrangements for all members of the population. We will develop the ProFamy method/program into widely-applicable, user-friendly, and commercialized software, and develop an associated database. The Software and database are useful for business and policy analysis on elderly long-term care needs, housing, energy, cars, durable goods and other home-related products and services, and for faculty and students as a research/teaching tool. To develop the database for non-demographers to conveniently perform households and consumption forecasting, we will establish the model standard schedules of race-sex-age-specific marital status transitions rates and race-age-parity-specific rates of marital and non-marital fertility. The database also includes time series of summary measures of demographic rates, elderly long-term care needs and household consumption. As an illustrative application, we will perform U.S. household forecasting (2000-2050) by race, with a focus on elderly living arrangement and long-term care needs assessment.