IIASA population researchers release data explorer

The Data Explorer was developed by IIASA's World Population Program scientists in partnership with researchers from the Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences under the umbrella of the Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital, a joint institute of IIASA, VID/OeAW, and the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (WU).

Designed using R+Shiny, the Data Explorer provides data, projection assumptions, and results for the population of all world countries (195) by age, sex, and education for alternative scenarios from 2010 to 2060 with extensions to 2100, based on a half-dozen scenarios. Other indicators related to fertility, mortality, and migration are also available. There is the option of consulting the data online or downloading into a file (CSV) that can also be read using the software. The Data Explorer includes graphical representation in the form of dynamic pyramids and maps. Users can access links to country profiles and the relevant meta-data for more details.

The Data Explorer allows users to browse, select, visualize and download the assumption and result data produced by the global population projection exercise to be released in Summer 2014 by Lutz, Butz, and K.C. (Eds). It also includes population projections developed for the 5th assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) according to a set of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) scenarios.

There are two main areas where the new projections advance the state of the art beyond existing other global population projections (those that cover most world countries):

• They explicitly and systematically incorporates population heterogeneity by level of education, thereby illustrating how educational attainment can and should be routinely added to age and sex as a third demographic dimension.
• The assumptions about future trends in fertility, mortality and migration include the scientific input of more than 500 population experts around the world who responded to an online questionnaire and assessed the validity of alternative arguments as well as the conclusions of intensive discussions at five meta-expert meetings.
  

The global population projection exercise has been documented in an Oxford University Press book by Lutz, Butz, and K.C. (Eds) entitled World Population and Human Capital in the 21st Century to be released in September 2014. It can be accessed at www.wittgensteincentre.org/dataexplorer

Last edited: 21 August 2014