Global Human Capital: Integrating Education and Population
Wolfgang Lutz and Samir K.C.
Almost universally, women with higher levels of education have fewer children. Better education is
associated with lower mortality, better health, and different migration patterns. Hence, the global
population outlook depends greatly on further progress in education, particularly of young women.
By 2050, the highest and lowest education scenarios —assuming identical education-specific
fertility rates—result in world population sizes of 8.9 and 10.0 billion, respectively. Better
education also matters for human development, including health, economic growth, and
democracy. Existing methods of multi-state demography can quantitatively integrate education into
standard demographic analysis, thus adding the “ quality” dimension.
Article published in Science 29 July 2011.