A brief guide to producing a national population projection

Background There are surprisingly few resources available which offer an introductory guide to preparing a national population projection using cohort-component model. Many demography textbooks cover projections quite briefly, and many academic papers on focus advanced technical issues.
 Aims The aim of this paper is provide short accessible producing national-scale the model.
 Data methods describes model from accounting perspective, presents all necessary calculations, covers key steps form part preparation process – gathering input data validating outputs. An accompanying Excel workbook implements contains example for Australia.
 Conclusions Calculating involves fairly simple algebra, but broader more complex, requires careful consideration judgement.