Page - 16 - in options, Volume winter 2014/2015

16 options + winter 2014/2015 www.iiasa.ac.at Traditional demographic projection tools normally only structure the population by age and sex. The multidimensional demographic tools developed at IIASA and applied in these new projections structure the population by age, sex, and level of education. Since all demographic rates and, in particular fertility rates in developing countries, differ greatly by level of education, the future looks different when researchers explicitly account for the changing education structure of the population. “This book presents the broadest ever synthesis of expert knowledge on drivers of fertility, mortality, migration and education in all parts of the world,” says Wolfgang Lutz, director of IIASA’s World Population Program and founding director of the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital, a  collaboration of IIASA, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the Vienna University of Economics (WU). Lutz led the project, which involved over 550 experts in a series of surveys and expert workshops held on five continents. Beyond numbers The potential number of people on the planet is far from the most important information contained in their new data, say Lutz and his colleagues. “What’s important is not simply the number of people, it is their capabilities, their health, and how much education they have—what we call human capital” says Lutz. A growing body of research from demographers at IIASA and beyond has shown clearly that education is vital in determining future population growth, future health, as well as many other factors including economic growth, quality of governance, and the capacity to adapt to climate change. Education has long been considered a key driver in demography but was not explicitly incorporated into the models because of lack of data and unfamiliarity with the multidimensional methods. “But now the data and the appropriate methods are there, and there is no reason to maintain the conventional narrow focus on just age and sex,” says Lutz. As Joel  Cohen of The Rockefeller University and Columbia University wrote in a review of the book, “This monumental, pioneering volume proselytizes for a new trinity of fundamental of demography: age, sex and education. If this book succeeds in its mission, as I hope it will, the future will look different, not only for the science of demography, but also for all people’s lives.” “When we think about human behavior it makes sense that what is in your brain is equally or even more important than your age, gender, or what is in your wallet,” says Lutz. He notes that the new approach will have far-reaching implications for research on future social and economic change. This explicit consideration of education also has direct implications for population projections. In  the case of Nigeria, the above-mentioned UN projections show an increase from 160 million in 2010 to 914 million in 2100. “These projections assume that fertility has remained stagnant at six children for the past 10 years, and will then decline more slowly than IIASA projections suggest,” says Lutz. “But if we look at the education of young women today, we see that in the 20 to 24 age group, half already have secondary education, while among women aged 40 to 44 it is only a quarter. And since more educated women consistently have lower fertility, future fertility is likely to decline, as the more educated girls enter reproductive age. Disregarding this important structural change leads to higher projections of future fertility.” The new IIASA projections also take into account a growing body of research that redefines how people age, so that in the new projections, the proportion of the population that is considered old is based on years of remaining life expectancy, rather than an arbitrary number of years lived. A long history of IIASA population projections The 2014 projections build on a long history of groundbreaking population research from IIASA scientists. In the 1970s and 80s, IIASA researchers Andrei Rogers and Nathan  Keyfitz made history by developing the methods multidimensional demographic projections. IIASA also published the first global probabilistic projections and spearheaded the approach of expert-argument based projections. Previous sets of projections were published in three major research papers published in the journal Nature in 1997, 2001, and 2008, by Lutz and IIASA colleagues Sergei  Scherbov and Warren  Sanderson. + 0 2000 10000 8000 6000 4000  Under 15  2010 20902020  Under 15  No Education  Primary  Secondary 24000 18000 12000 2400018000120006000 60000 Male Male 24000 18000 12000 2400018000120006000 60000 120+ 115–119 110–114 105–109 100–104 95–99 90–94 85–89 80–84 75–79 70–74 65–69 60–64 55–59 50–54 45–49 40–44 35–39 30–34 25–29 20–24 15–19 10–14 5–9 0–4 120+ 115–119 110–114 105–109 100–104 95–99 90–94 85–89 80–84 75–79 70–74 65–69 60–64 55–59 50–54 45–49 40–44 35–39 30–34 25–29 20–24 15–19 10–14 5–9 0–4 Nigeria 2010 Total populaton: 160 million Nigeria 2050 Total populaton: 370 million