Forecast Accuracy and Uncertainty of Australian Bureau of Statistics State and Territory Population Projections

Table 4

Average errors of ABS state and territory projections of total population at 5- and 10-year-projection durations by jump-off year.

Jump-off; year	5-year projection duration			10 year projection duration
	MAPE (%)	WMAPE (%)	PRE in WMAPE (%)	MAPE (%)	WMAPE (%)	PRE in WMAPE (%)
1978	1.86	1.94	−11.6	3.08	3.30	−8.2
1981	1.61	1.24	32.4	3.09	1.59	61.2
1984	1.87	2.00	−0.6	3.74	2.60	−4.3
1987	2.41	1.21	−3.9	4.71	3.17	−105.2
1989	2.51	1.66	−30.7	4.34	2.48	−34.8
1993	1.95	0.99	36.4	2.54	1.90	−6.0
1995	1.79	1.22	−27.0	1.76	1.23	1.1
1997	1.33	1.20	8.7	3.75	3.26	−66.9
1999	1.42	0.93	15.4	4.51	4.20	−13.5
2002	2.30	1.50	29.5	n/a	n/a	n/a
2004	3.44	2.73	3.4	n/a	n/a	n/a
2006	1.20	1.31	57.6	n/a	n/a	n/a

Source: author’s calculations using ABS projections, ERP data and linear extrapolations.