ARRA - Assessing Uncertainty

This is an application for an Administrative Supplement to the NICHD grant, "Assessing Uncertainty in Population Projections and Linked Demographic-Disease Models via Bayesian Melding," to accelerate the work by hiring three additional research assistants. The parent grant aims to develop Bayesian melding methods for probabilistic population projections in collaboration with the United Nations Population Division (UNDP). Under the parent grant, we have already developed new methods for probabilistic population projections that perform extremely well. The UNPD has assessed the results and decided to move towards producing probabilistic projections using our methods. This will require rapid development of three elements of the parent proposal: parametric modeling of age-specific mortality rates for countries with sparse data, parametric modeling of age-specific fertility rates, and methods for probabilistic population projections for countries with generalized HIV/AIDS epidemics. Under this supplement we will hire three research assistants and each of them will work on one of these three elements.