Professor D Dorling, Dr GP Clarke and Dr D Ballas
1st October 2001 – 31st August 2003
Joseph Rowntree Foundation
This proposal is designed to fund the work necessary to simulate the population of Britain and how it is changing at the level of sixty million individuals for each of the thirty years up to 2021. The proposal is split into three parts: 1) design; 2) verification; and 3) full implementation. Part 1 could be funded alone or in conjunction with part 2. Agreement to fund part 3 could be contingent on early results. This work has been discussed in some detail with Danielle Walker and David Darton at the Foundation.
Aims of this research are to produce a simulated population of Britain which could be used (amongst many other things) to hold government to account over whether its current policies are likely to achieve their long term targets. We could also use the simulation to check the extent to which short-term goals are being achieved, without the usual two/three year “data lag”. The simulation would also allow proposed social policies to be tested and to test how current social policies might be influenced by unforeseen events such as the onset of a major international recession.