A dataset that allows users to browse, select, visualize and download demographic data and population projections.

Access the Data and Graphic Explorer

The Wittgenstein Centre Human Capital Data Explorer (WCDE) Version 3.3 (data version V15, 2020 base year; Zenodo WIC3.005) was developed by researchers at the IIASA Population and Just Societies Program, in partnership with the Austrian Academy of Sciences' Vienna Institute of Demography (VID), under the umbrella of the Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, OeAW, University of Vienna).

About the WCDE

Designed using R Shiny, the Data Explorer 3.3 provides data, projection assumptions, and results on the population of 200 world countries and regions by age, sex, and education for alternative scenarios from 2020 to 2100, based on different scenarios (7) of future population and human capital trends.

Other indicators relating to fertility, mortality, and migration are also available.

The WCDE includes graphical representation in the form of dynamic pyramids and maps.

There is the option of consulting the data online or downloading into a file (CSV) that can also be read using the software. In addition, you may download data directly into R using the WCDE package.

Zenodo

Current version: V15 (September 2026). It is identical to the data in the Wittgenstein Centre Human Capital Data Explorer.

This new version includes population projections by six levels of educational attainment from 2020 to 2100 for 200 countries according to seven scenarios (SSP1-5, SSP2-Zero Migration, and SSP2-Double Migration). The reconstruction of the population by age, sex and education for 1950–2015 (147 countries) is available at 
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.16927371
 

FAST FACTS

The Human Capital Data Explorer contains detailed data by age, sex and educational attainment (6 categories) for a large set of indicators:

  • Population and Human Capital Stocks: Population size, median age, sex ratio, dependency ratio, educational attainment distribution, mean years of schooling, gender gap in education attainment.
  • Demographic Change: Growth rate, natural increase, fertility rate, birth rate, mean age at child bearing, life expectancy, survival ratio, death rate, net migration, immigration and emigration.
  • New aging indicators: Age when remaining life expectancy is below 15 years, proportion of population with a remaining life expectancy below 15 years.
WCDE logo © IIASA

WCDE Features

The results and methodological details of the population projections by levels of educational attainment were published in 2024 in K.C. et al.

The WCDE allows visualization of population pyramids and population size by education for any country and creation of maps around the available indicators.

All graphics can be downloaded.

On top of the assumptions about future trends in fertility, mortality, and education, the projections study the effect of several migration assumptions applied to the context of the set of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios related to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Further features about the methodology can be found in Lutz, Butz, and K.C. (2014) and in Lutz, Goujon, KC, Stonawski, and Stilianakis (Eds.) (2018).

Related publications

K.C., S., Dhakad, M. , Potančoková, M. , Adhikari, S., Yildiz, D. , Mamolo, M., Sobotka, T., Zeman, K., Abel, G. , Lutz, W. , & Goujon, A. (2024). Updating the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) Global Population and Human Capital Projections. IIASA Working Paper. Laxenburg, Austria: WP-24-003

Speringer, M., Goujon, A. , K.C., S., Potančoková, M. , Reiter, C. , Jurasszovich, S., & Eder, J. (2019). Global Reconstruction of Educational Attainment, 1950 to 2015: Methodology and Assessment. Vienna Institute of Demography , Vienna, Austria.

Lutz, W. , Goujon, A. , K.C., S., Stonawski, M., & Stilianakis, N. (2018). Demographic and Human Capital Scenarios for the 21st
Century: 2018 assessment for 201 countries. Publications Office of the European Union , Luxembourg. 10.2760/41776.

Lutz, W. , Butz, W.P., & K.C., S. (2014). World Population & Human Capital in the Twenty-first Century. UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0198703163

Wittgenstein Centre

POPJUS is one of the three pillars of The Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital, a collaboration among the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and the University of Vienna.

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