Research project
FuturePop: Population projections, centralisation, and planning for an uncertain future
- Start date: 1 January 2025
- End date: 31 December 2028
- Funder: Research Council of Norway
- Value: NOK 13,018,000
- Partners and collaborators: Statistics Norway; Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU); Queen's University Belfast; Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development (KDD); Distriktssenteret — Centre of Competence on Rural Development KS; Norwegian Association of Local and Regional Authorities
- Primary investigator: Professor Nik Lomax
- External co-investigators: Stefan Leknes, Michael J. Thomas, Sturla A. Løkken, Zhiyang Jia, Nico Keilman and Ane Tømmerås (Statistics Norway); Jørn Rattsø, Hildegunn Ekroll Stokke and Eric Wee (NTNU); Ian Shuttleworth (Queen's University Belfast).
Population projections are among the most widely used tools in public planning. They shape decisions about school places, healthcare capacity, housing and infrastructure, most of which are taken years in advance and are costly to reverse. The models behind them have well-known limits. Most rely on the cohort-component method, which carries only a handful of population characteristics and produces single-path scenarios with no formal measure of uncertainty. Projection errors are larger at smaller spatial scales, which is where planners need most detail. FuturePop addresses these limitations through four connected work packages: (1) moving projections from macro-level cohort-component models to dynamic spatial microsimulation; (2) attaching formal uncertainty estimates to geographically detailed projections; (3) analysing the dynamics of centralisation and rural depopulation; and (4) evaluating place-based policy interventions. Microsimulation operates at the level of individuals and can therefore carry far richer detail (family size, immigrant status and migration history) into the forecast. Drawing on Norway's detailed population register data, we are developing small-area estimation and forecasting methods to quantify how uncertain those detailed projections are. Centralisation and rural depopulation are the processes those projections have to capture. Using several decades of register data, we ask whether recent large-scale immigration accelerates movement towards cities or is instead creating new rural destinations, and how labour market size, employer–employee matching and industrial composition sustain urban advantage. The fourth strand evaluates place-based policy, focusing on public investment in airports and roads, and feeds causal estimates of migration responses back into the microsimulation. This allows us to assess how an intervention in one place is likely to alter population trajectories elsewhere.
Impact
The methodological work is intended to feed into the official population projections that Statistics Norway publishes, which would carry improvements made in the project through to the local, regional and national bodies already using those projections to plan services and investment. Collaborating partners spanning every level of Norwegian government are involved throughout: they shape model outputs, advise on how uncertainty is communicated to planners, and co-produce policy briefs. Centralisation and rural depopulation are common to much of Europe, and the methods are transferable to other national contexts for which comparable register or administrative data are available.