How Education Drives Demography and Knowledge Informs Projections

This paper makes the case for systematically adding education to age and sex as a third standard demographic dimension. It directly addresses the question whether the pervasive association of education with demographic outcomes reflects a causal relationship. Based on the notion of functional causality, the paper reviews theoretical and empirical approaches for assessing this question according to three criteria. It also explores possible alternative explanations such as reverse causality and self-selection, concluding that a functional causal relationship between education and health- and fertility-related outcomes is supported by the evidence. The paper then describes the book's expert argument-based approach for defining assumptions for population projections and compare this approach with how European national statistical offices now make and use their assumptions for population projections. Against this background the approach chosen for this study combines a structured substantive inquiry among hundreds of international experts with formal statistical models