Jake's View | Official overestimates of Hong Kong’s future population are deliberate and will prove costly

The 8.22 million population by 2043 is only one scenario in the government’s official projections; the high growth scenario projects a population of 9.01 million by 2046 and 9.11 million by 2064. “Hong Kong 2030 plus” must be robust enough to cater for uncertainties and changes.

Raymond Lee, Director of planning

Letters to the Editor , December 29

Let’s accept immediately that making multi-year population forecasts is mostly guesswork. It pretends to hard statistical analysis but its flaw lies in assumptions that are just crystal ball gazing.

If our statisticians mostly get it wrong, however, you would think they would as often get it wrong by making forecasts that are too low as too high.

Not so. The record shows that they always guess too high, sometimes astoundingly so. The first chart tells you the story. The latest guess is the lower red line. It says our population will peak at 8.2 million in 2043 and then actually go down.