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Estimate Daily Demographic Rates from UN World Population Prospects Data

Source: R/est_demographic_rates.R
est_demographic_rates.Rd

This function estimates daily population, birth rates, and death rates for countries in the MOSAIC framework based on the UN World Population Prospects data. The function interpolates annual demographic data to daily values and applies an optional smoothing method to generate continuous time-series estimates. The function can produce smoothed times series of any length from 1967 to 2100 (the extent of processed UN data and model projections).

Usage

est_demographic_rates(PATHS, date_start, date_stop, smooth_method)

Arguments

PATHS

A list containing paths where raw and processed data are stored. PATHS is typically the output of the get_paths() function and should include the following components:

  • DATA_RAW: Path to the directory containing the raw UN World Population Prospects data.

  • DATA_PROCESSED: Path to the directory where processed demographic data should be saved.

  • DATA_WHO_ANNUAL: Path to the directory containing annual WHO cholera mortality data.

  • MODEL_INPUT: Path to the directory where model input parameter files should be saved.

date_start

The starting date for demographic parameters. Accepts Date class objects or valid character strings.

date_stop

The ending date for data demographic parameters. Must be in a valid date format (same as date_start).

smooth_method

The method used to smooth annual demographic rates when converting them to a daily time scale. Must be one of the following:

  • "none": No smoothing applied (annual values transposed to daily time scale).

  • "linear": Applies simple moving average smoothing.

  • "spline": Uses cubic spline interpolation for smoothing.

Value

The function does not return a value. It estimates demographic rates and saves the results as CSV files containing population size, birth rates, and death rates over time.

Details

The function performs the following steps:

  1. Filters the demographic data for the specified date range.

  2. Converts annual birth and death rates to daily estimates.

  3. Removes reported cholera deaths from all-cause mortality estimates.

  4. Applies the chosen smoothing method to daily demographic rates.

  5. Saves the processed data and model parameters to the specified directory.

The processed data file is saved in PATHS$DATA_PROCESSED/demographics/, and the model input parameters are stored in PATHS$MODEL_INPUT/.

Data Source: United Nations World Population Prospects

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# Define paths for raw and processed data
PATHS <- get_paths()

# Estimate demographic rates from 2000-01-01 to 2023-12-31 using spline smoothing
est_demographic_rates(PATHS, date_start = "2000-01-01", date_stop = "2023-12-31", smooth_method = "spline")
} # }