Education and demography: a review of world population and human capital in the 21st century. Vienna Yearbook of Population Research|Vienna Yearbook of Population Research 2018|

This discussion piece is an extended review of the work on projecting the world’s population and human capital by country conducted by the Wittgenstein Centre (WIC). The project was led by Wolfgang Lutz, and its outcomes were published by Oxford University Press in a book that appeared in 2014. Using statistics from the book and elsewhere, this article starts with an overview of the development of educational attainment. The role that education plays in the WIC2014 model is identified. Definitions of ‘multi-dimensional’, ‘multi-state’, and ‘micro-simulation’ are offered, and are used to characterise the model. A thumbnail sketch of the main methods used in the projections is given. The final section sets out a possible agenda for the future development of the WIC2014 model. This review is intended to help readers tackle the more than 1,000 pages of argument and analysis in the book, which represents a major contribution to demographic research in the 21st century