CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1. Background of the study

Population is often used simply to refer to the total number of a given piece or a set of item from which samples are taken for statistical analysis.  Population census is the procedure of systematically acquiring and recording information about the members of a given population. It is a regularly occurring and official count of a particular population, the term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses include agriculture, business, and traffic censuses. In the latter cases the elements of the ‘population’ are farms, businesses, and so forth, rather than people. The United Nations defines the essential features of population and housing censuses as “individual enumeration, universality within a defined territory, simultaneity and defined periodicity”, and recommends that population censuses be taken at least every 10 years    (Suhato, 1995).

Population refers to the universe of human beings with distinct individual /group characteristics such as total number (i.e. size), composition (age, sex, marital status, and literacy) distribution in space and changes in these attributes. In population studies uses is increasingly being made of non-demographic events to explain and predict variations in demographic variables such as birth rates, death rates, migration rates, the composition and size of the population. (Umoh, 2001).

A population census is the counting of all the people living in a country at a particular time. It collects information on the size, distribution, composition and other social/economic characteristic of population, (National Population Commission 2005).

Population forecasting is a future estimate indicating how the population size will increase arbitrary. It is therefore what the future population would be. Population projection is based upon reasonable assumption on the future course of fertility, mortality, migration (Umoh, 2001).

Population forecasting are calculations base on models which show the future development of a population when certain assumptions are made about the future course of population change, usually with respect to fertility, mortality and migration. They are in general purely formal calculations, developing the implications of the assumptions that are made. (Shryock and Siegel, 1980)

A prediction or forecast is a statement about the way things will happen in the future, often but not always based on experience or knowledge. While there is much overlap between prediction and forecast, a prediction may be a statement that some outcome is expected, while a forecast may cover a range of possible outcomes, although guaranteed information about the information is in many cases impossible, prediction is necessary to allow plans to be made about possible developments. Statistical agencies traditionally deal with the uncertainty of forecasting population variables by producing two or more forecasts of fertility or mortality (or both), and then calculating a range of forecasts. For instance, Statistics Norway expects the number of children aged 6–12 in Norway in 2010 to be between 401,000 and 436,000, depending on whether fertility is low or high — that is, on whether women will have an average of 1.5 or 2.1 children, respectively, in 2010 (Statistics Norway, 1999).

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