Harnessing Africa’s population dynamics for sustainable development

Session 16: Harnessing the African Union’s Demographic Dividend Paradigm at Country Level: The Issue of Policy Prioritization and Agenda Operationalization, Monday, November 18, 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

1. Deriving Niger’s Demographic and Education Future to 2062 with Stakeholders: Which Results? • Anne Goujon, Guillaume Marois, Patrick Sabourin

Session 19: Population Projections: Methods, Assumptions and Implications, Monday, November 18, 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
2. Probabilistic Population Projections • Wolfgang Lutz

Session 25: Conditions Necessary for African Countries to Harness the Dividend and Costs of Inaction, Monday, November 18, 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM

3. Education Rather than Age-Structure Brings Demographic Dividend • Wolfgang Lutz, Jesus Crespo Cuaresma, Endale Kebede, Alexia Fürnkranz-Prskawetz, Erich Striessnig, Warren C. Sanderson 

Session 53: Demography of Human Capital Formation, Tuesday, November 19, 4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Chair: Anne Goujon

Background

The World Population Program at IIASA under the leadership of Lutz, has published probabilistic projections of the world population since 1996, producing large numbers of scenarios that systematically varied fertility, mortality, and migration assumptions to study their sensitivity in terms of different outcome variables.

In 2014, the projections presented in the Oxford University Press volume World Population and Human Capital in the Twenty-First Century (eds. Lutz W, Butz WP, KC S). It is the first book to systematically and quantitatively address the role of educational attainment in global population trends and models. By adding education to the traditional demographic characteristics of age and sex, this distinguishing feature substantially alters the way we look at changes in populations and how we project them into the future. Through the systematic addition of the education dimension, this approach can be thought of as adding a ‘quality’ dimension to the consideration of population numbers.

The most recent projections were published in the framework of the Centre of Expertise on Population and Migration (CEPAM), a research partnership between IIASA's World Population Program and the European Commission's Joint Research Centre. CEPAM conducts research on the likely longer-term impact of alternative migration scenarios on the changing structure of Europe’s population by not only considering age and sex but also education and labor force participation. Two major publications have been launched. A book Demographic and human capital scenarios for the 21^st century (eds. Lutz W, Goujon A, Samir KC, Stonawski M, Stilianakis N) in 2018, that examines potential future scenarios on population trends across the world, taking into account migration, fertility, mortality, education, and labor force participation, and a flagship report Demographic Scenarios for the EU: Migration, population and education (eds.  Lutz W, Amran G, Belanger A, Conte A, Gailey N, Ghio D, Grapsa E, Jensen K, et al.) in 2019, that examines the key factors that will shape European demographics over the coming decades.