What are population projections?

Population projections are generally an estimate of what the population will look like in future. 

More specifically, projections are an educated guess of the population size and structure based on assumptions about future population trends and analyses of current and historical trends. Population projections are conditional and the resulting figures are dependent on the underlying assumptions.

Ghana approaching 22,000 cases as daily infections continue to rise

Ghana's case count continues to rise amidst the easing of restrictions. 4,227 new cases were recorded in the past week since our last update which is about one and a half times the new cases reported in the previous week. The current count stands at 21,968 confirmed cases.

All regions reported new cases. Greater Accra (2,229) and Ashanti (1,012) contributed three-quarter of the new cases.

Total Fertility Rates

The standard measure of fertility is the Total Fertility Rate (TFR).

Total Fertility Rate is the number of children than a woman has. TFR ranges from 1 in South Korea to 6.9 in Niger (2018 World Bank est.) with the top 25 highest fertility countries in sub-Saharan Africa, mainly from West and Central Africa.

Replacement level fertility is the level of fertility required for each generation to replace itself. Normally, 2 people would need to have 2 children to replace themselves. However at the population level the replacement TFR would have to be greater than 2 to account for the loss of children who will die before reaching adulthood. Replacement level TFR is thus considered to be 2.1 (in high mortality settings however, replacement level fertility would have to be higher because a greater proportion of children die in childhood).

Basic fertility concepts

Fertility, one of the population processes is defined as the number of children born to a woman. 

What is known as fertility (i.e. the physical ability to have children) in conventional language is referred to as fecundity by demographers.

Fertility is determined by two main factors - biological and behavioural. The behavioural factors exert a greater influence on fertility than the social factors.