How much can societal turning points affect forecasts’ accuracy in Europe? Case of post-communistic transformation in Slovakia and the Czech Republic

Abstract

It seems that the least accurate (population) forecasts are those published in the period of great historical turning points both economic and political. Several studies analysed the forecasts’ accuracy in Western countries, but the post-1990 development in the post-communistic countries has not been analysed in this respect. The general goal of the study is to show how hardly predictable and poorly predicted the demographical processes have appeared to be during the major societal and economic turning points after the post-communistic transformation started. To do this, the study first provides an exact measurement of the forecasts’ accuracy in transitioning Slovakia and Czechia. The key finding is that the forecasters either did not recognise the beginning of somewhat completely “new” or underestimated the dimensions of the turning points and turns in the recent trends. Thus, the assumption “drag” shows up much more frequently than some kind of over-reaction. Implicitly, the research re-opens a perpetual question whether methodological–mathematical improvements are more (or less) important than the deep insight into the forecasted processes. Secondly, the study demonstrates the range and dimension of changes that impact the demographic present and future. Here, the alternative future is built and simulated in terms of what the populations would have looked like if the socialist system had not collapsed. It is a quite simple but very smart way how to demonstrate the range of turnover since 1989.