ABSTRACT
One thing that we know with certainty about the future population sizes is that they are uncertain. The nature of this uncertainty and ways to deal with it are highly controversial and still scientifically unresolved issues. Can we speak meaningfully about a distribution of possible future population sizes? Can mean, median, and modal future population sizes be determined? Can confidence intervals for future population sizes be derived? The literature on projections contains three views, none of which we find completely satisfactory (see discussion in Chapter 2). In this chapter, we provide a fourth perspective.
