Household and Living Arrangement Projections at the Small Area Level
In this chapter presented and discussed the basic concepts and methodology for applying the ProFamy approach in combination with ratio methods (including the constant-share and shift-share ratio methods) to project household and living arrangement projections at the small area level. To assess the accuracy of the combined ratio method and ProFamy approach and present illustrative applications, we calculated projections from 1990 to 2000 and compared projected estimates with census-observed counts in 2000 for sets of randomly selected 25 small counties and 25 small cities which were more or less evenly distributed across the United States. The comparisons show that, in general, most forecast errors are reasonably small – mostly less than or slightly more than 5%. These results evidently illustrated the utility of the ProFamy approach in combination with ratio methods to project households and living arrangements at the small area level.
