An evaluation of population projection errors for census tracts

Population projections are widely used in both the public and private sectors for planning, budgeting, and analysis. For these purposes, projections are often needed for small areas such as census tracts, zip code areas or traffic analysis zones. Population size, growth constraints, shifting boundaries, and data availability create special problems for small-area projections, however, and very little is known about their forecasting performance. In this article we evaluate the accuracy and bias of projections of total population and population by age group for census tracts in three counties in Florida.