  The bayesTFR package for R provides a set of functions to produce
probabilistic projections of the total fertility rates (TFR) for all countries,
and is widely used, including as part of the basis for the UN's official
population projections for all countries. Liu and Raftery (2020) extended the
theoretical model by adding a layer that accounts for the past TFR estimation
uncertainty. A major update of bayesTFR implements the new extension. Moreover,
a new feature of producing annual TFR estimation and projections extends the
existing functionality of estimating and projecting for five-year time periods.
An additional autoregressive component has been developed in order to account
for the larger autocorrelation in the annual version of the model. This article
summarizes the updated model, describes the basic steps to generate
probabilistic estimation and projections under different settings, compares
performance, and provides instructions on how to summarize, visualize and
diagnose the model results.
