The world's changing human capital stock: Multi-state population projections by educational attainment

This research note presents the first global population projections by educational attainment using methods of multi-state population projection. The educational composition of the population by age and sex and educational fertility differentials are estimated for 13 world regions, and alternative scenarios are presented to the year 2030. One of these scenarios assumes constant educational transition rates and the other assumes that all regions reach Northern American levels of enrollment rates by 2030. The strong momentum or, as the case may be, inertia in the transformation of the educational composition of a population, seen in the results, arises because education is mostly acquired at a young age. The sex bias in the educational composition, especially evident in some developing countries, is unlikely to disappear soon. China has made remarkable progress in improving educational enrollment and as a consequence by 2030 is expected to have more educated people of working age than Europe and Northern America together.

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