Abstract
Human population growth rate is an important parameter for real-world planning. Common approaches rely upon fixed parameters like human population, mortality rate, fertility rate, which is collected historically to determine the region's population growth rate. Literature does not provide a solution for areas with no historical knowledge. In such areas, machine learning can solve the problem, but a multitude of machine learning algorithm makes it difficult to determine the best approach. Further, the missing feature is a common real-world problem. Thus, it is essential to compare and select the machine learning techniques which provide the best and most robust in the presence of missing features. This study compares 17 machine learning techniques (base learners and ensemble learners) performance in predicting the human population growth rate of the country. Among the 17 machine learning techniques, random forest outperformed all the other techniques both in predictive performance and robustness towards missing features. Thus, the study successfully demonstrates and compares machine learning techniques to predict the human population growth rate in settings where historical data and feature information is not available. Further, the study provides the best machine learning algorithm for performing population growth rate prediction.