DEMOS—a PC-system for population projections for small areas

Abstract

DEMOS*PLUS is the name of Kommundata's system for population projections. It works together with another package called DEMOGRAFEN, (the DEMOGRAPHER) aimed for presentation of demographic data. These two systems are members of the software group “Planning Systems”, which are developed for social and economic planning activities in local governments. The “Planning Systems” are all written in APL*PLUS/PC. They are distributed with the run-time system of APL*PLUSAbout 80 percent of the expenditures of local governments in Sweden can be assigned to certain age classes. For example the costs of schools, day nurseries, care of old people. Hence it is very important for local authorities to have knowledges of the population and its distribution by age and housing areas. Therefore more than one hundred municipalities in Sweden are using DEMOS and DEMOGRAFEN to improve their knowledge of the population and to make population forecasts for different housing areas. The systems are also used in education in some universities.DEMOS is designed to give the maximum flexibility in making projections and is easy to use with pop-up windows and extensive on-line help. With DEMOS it is easy to make population forecasts of the whole municipality as well as population projections of selected housing areas for special purposes.