Big Data for Population and Social Policies

Harnessing big data for policymaking is an evolving paradigm, which is being influenced by the rapid advancements in technology that are producing real-time data exhausts of our everyday activities. With the aim of accelerating the adoption of big data applications in the areas of population dynamics and social development research, we present a brief introduction to big data research approaches for researchers and practitioners in these fields. We discuss big data fundamentals, methods, potentials, as well as challenges and how to address them. We highlight these aspects with evidence drawn from use cases in the hope of increasing support for the continuation, improvement and expansion of big data analytics in policymaking and the operational delivery of public programmes.