Methods of Forecasting the Demand of the Population

Recently, research on forecasting the demand of the population has become appreciably more active. A number of research collectives are now concerning themselves with these problems. Economic-mathematical models have been elaborated and are being used to make forecast calculations of the structure of the population's effective demand for various periods of time in the future. However, as a rule this research is primarily of a methodological character. Much less attention is devoted to the theoretical problems pertaining to forecasting the demand of the population. The lack of elaboration of these problems impedes the further development of methodological research in this area and limits the possibility for making most effective use of the results of demand forecasting in the practice of national economic planning and management.