1 Long Term Global Projections of Household Numbers and Size Distributions for LINK Countries and Regions. Duncan Ironmonger, Vic Jennings and Bill Lloyd-Smith Households Research Unit Department of Economics, University of Melbourne Australia VIC 3010 Abstract: Global projections are made for household numbers and size distributions for 144 individual countries and a rest-of-world region. These projections use the latest UN World population projections with three fertility scenarios (UN 1999) and the “Age-ratio Poisson” model originally developed in Jennings, Lloyd-Smith and Ironmonger (1999), as a “Dependency-ratio. Poisson” model. The projections are presented for LINK model countries and regions and show the total world growth in household numbers is almost independent of the fertility scenario. If these projections are sustained, in the next 50 years, the world number of households will treble from 1.3 billion in 1990 to 3.7 billion in 2050. This will occur whether the world population doubles from 5.1 billion to 10.4 billion on the high fertility scenario or only increases by 50 per cent to 7.1 billion on the low fertility scenario. The apparent similarity of total household growth under the various scenarios conceals a phenomenal switch in the size distributions. Urban regions are expected to absorb most of this growth. The paper continues the research on the demography of households by the University of Melbourne’s Households Research Unit. CONTENTS Introduction 1. Statistics of Household Numbers and Long-Term Projections 2. The Household Intensity Model 3. Exogenous Data on Population and Age Structure 4. Projections of Household Intensities and Households 5. The Household Size Distribution Model 6. Projections of Household Size Distributions 7. Discussion 8. Concluding Remarks