FORECASTING THE POPULATION OF PAKISTAN USING ARIMA MODELS

Today, the tremendous increase in population is the major issue of the world. in this empirical study, population of pakistan from 1951 to 2007 is modelled using box jenkins arima methodology. the population of pakistan is also forecasted for the next 20 years using the parsimonious arima (1, 2, 0) model. if the current growth rate trend continues, the population of pakistan would be approximately 230.7 million in 2027. the model was validated by the criteria of mse, aic, sc, p-values and graphical techniques e.g. acf and pacf plots of residuals. the projected population by parsimonious arima model is close to the projected population of pakistan by different bureaus. these bureaus reported 229 million population of pakistan for the year 2025.