Stochastic small area population forecasting until 2015 for hospital planning in Rostock, Germany

Sabine Schnabel, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Klaus Dahmen, University of Rostock

This paper is about population forecasting until 2015 for the Rostock region, an area located in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, former GDR, which includes a city and its surrounding rural area. The development in this region is of particular interest for demographic research as it does not follow the trends of the population projection in the surrounding province of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. We use the program PEP (program for error propagation) for establishing stochastic population projections. These forecasts will be used for planning the allocation of clinical beds in the local university hospital. It turns out that the decline of the population in the Rostock region is less severe than for the province of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. We therefore argue that contrary to today's practice for the Rostock region alternative projections have to be used in public planning than for Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania as a whole.