World Population

The World Population Program is a global leader in the comprehensive study of the changing number, distribution, and composition of humans on the planet and the effect of these changes on sustainable development. This is essential to complement IIASA work on environmental topics, and makes IIASA the only global change research institute with significant in-house competence on the human population and its wellbeing.
Objectives
  • Expand the multi-dimensional model of population dynamics developed at IIASA to include an urban/rural dimension for all countries.
  • Define and test alternative specifications of Empowered Life Years, which are the years a person can be expected to be alive and “empowered”— as measured by health, ability to read, freedom from poverty, or subjective life satisfaction.
  • Produce the first systematic projections of new indicators of aging, which will explicitly reflect additional dimensions for most European countries and selected other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) counties. This will go beyond the conventional simplistic indicators which only reflect chronological age.
  • Provide policymakers with data pertaining to the likely proportions of urban populations and the changing age and education structure of urban populations.
  • Provide governments and civil society guidance as to what pathways are the most promising for reaching sustainable human wellbeing in the longer term.
  • Undertake science-policy dialogues on new measures of aging and the relationship to macro-economic impacts of demographic trends.

Top image © blvdone | Shutterstock

Selected highlights

Demography, human capital, and economic growth

Demography, human capital, and economic growth

      The Asian MetaCentre, IIASA, and the Wittgenstein Center (IIASA, VID/ÖAW, WU) organized two workshops at the Asian Demographic Research Institute (ADRI), Shanghai University, attracting participants from more than 20 countries from around the...

The state of world population aging

The state of world population aging

The rapid increase in both the number and proportion of older persons in the five BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) will have multifaceted implications for social and economic development. The first BRICS Meeting on Aging organized by...

Estimating global migration flows over the past decades

Estimating global migration flows over the past decades

      A new indirect estimation methodology, developed and applied by IIASA researchers, has quantified trends in global international migration flows over the past 55 years for the first time. These estimates provide a more comprehensive picture of...

Climate research needs a greater focus on human populations

Climate research needs a greater focus on human populations

The way in which climate change will affect future populations will depend largely on people’s capacity to adapt to changing conditions. According to IIASA researchers, such characteristics can be forecast in the long term using well-established demographic methods....