Demographic Processes in Russia: A Comparative Analysis of Predictive Models

The use of mathematical methods to study the dynamics and build forecasts of demographic indicators is possible both with the use of classical econometric models and new machine learning methods. Both approaches have certain advantages and disadvantages and do not allow us to obtain stable parameter estimates and reliable predictive estimates for long-term forecasting. Therefore, the paper proposes to perform a comparative analysis of the econometric approach and machine learning methods in modeling the main demographic indicators of the Russian Federation depending on the source data, which determined the purpose of the work, which is to study the impact of the instability of the source data on the choice of the type of models for long-term forecasting. The research methods were econometric time series models and neural networks. Research results: ARMA models have shown great efficiency for modeling the studied processes. These models have a transparent algorithm for both parameter estimation and their interpretation, make it possible to assess the reliability and significance of parameters, and make interval forecasts with the desired probability, which can be considered as the probability of individual development scenarios.