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What is The Not Yet Gazette?

Unlike many attempts to look into the future, the Gazette for the most part does not deal with technological change. Instead, it tries to reflect the possible consequences of demographic changes, such as the aging of the baby boom generation and the continued expansion of metropolitan areas.

The Not Yet Gazette is a byproduct of the projections of population, households and labor force published by the Office of State Demographer at Minnesota Planning in 1993 and 1994. People who use these reports often ask about the implications of these changes. How will they affect government, business and individuals? While no definite answers to these questions exist, the Gazette attempts to pull together current thinking about the implications of population change, to give one view of a possible future.

Ideas about possible consequences of population changes come from a variety of sources, including books; magazine, newspaper and journal articles; and discussions with experts in a variety of fields, as well as individuals in and outside state government. While the Gazette articles are, of course, completely fictional, they are based on some of these ideas and in part on one or more major projected demographic trends.

Readers are invited to submit ideas about the implications of population change that might make good articles for The Not Yet Gazette as news tips or letters to the editor. News tips, comments or letters to the editor can be submitted through The Not Yet Gazette Comments Page.

Users of population projections need to be aware that the projections can (and do) turn out to be wrong for many reasons, especially if they extend 25 or 30 years into the future. The potential sources of error are many. For example, the Minnesota Planning projections assume women will have on average slightly less than two children. If they instead have only one child or, conversely, three or four, projections of the number of children will be wrong by a large margin. Technological or lifestyle changes that allow more people to live outside cities could lead to greater-than-expected growth in rural areas. Economic trends could cause more, or fewer, people to move to Minnesota from other states and other countries. Natural disasters or infectious disease epidemics could push the number of deaths higher than expected.

Generally, projections involving people who are already alive when the projections are made will be more accurate than projections of people who have not been born yet. Projections five or 10 years into the future are usually more reliable than those going out 20 or 30 years. Projections of large, slow-growing populations, such as that of Hennepin County or white Minnesotans, will probably be more accurate than those of small, fast-growing populations, such as Asian Minnesotans.