Can you tell us more about our 2024 Yidan Prize for Education Research Laureate?

Wolfgang Lutz is one of the world's leading demographers. He studied statistics and holds a PhD in Demography at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis. He was for 25 years the Director of the World Population Program.

He also directed the Vienna Institute of Demography and established the Wittgenstein Center for Demography and Global Human Capital, which is known for some of the world's most important datasets in this field.

What is unique about Wolfgang’s research approach?

Demographers usually help us understand how our populations evolve and what that means for our collective future. What Lutz has added to the field is understanding the difference that education makes to this. The contribution that we all can make in this world, economically, socially, very much depends on the investment that society makes in us. In terms of helping us develop our knowledge, our skills, our attitudes, our values. And Lutz helped us connect the dots between better skills, better jobs, better life in our populations. So that public policy can create that better world through education.

His work provides a scientific foundation for numerically estimating the longer-term consequences of near-term investments in education. And, for some, those connections may look intuitive, but by putting numbers to them we can understand and quantify their implication. That's crucially important for public policy to invest scarce public resources, where they can make most of a difference for our collective future.

And there’s something that perhaps fewer people know about Wolfgang Lutz and that is his generosity in spirit, his deep sense of public service, his commitment to the next generation of researchers.

The datasets that he developed, he hasn't kept for himself or for his institute. He made [them] available to the world as a global public good, enabling researchers all around the world to improve.

Can you give us an example of how his work applies in today’s world?

Think of climate change, you know the capacity populations have to adapt to the changing climate very closely depends on the engineers and scientists they can mobilize to support climate adaptation through new technologies, new infrastructure.

It also depends on the awareness of people, of the climate agenda, the willingness of people to change their behavior to become more responsible citizens, more responsible consumers who value the future of the planet as much as their present life. And both depend very crucial on the quality of education. And Lutz was able to introduce education as a variable, as a dimension into the shared socioeconomic pathways scenarios which are the foundation [and] also the tool to understand and project climate change mitigation and adaptation.

So his work has, for example, direct implications for the global funding mechanism of climate. Think of the Green Climate Fund that has attracted billions of dollars in pledges to improve the climate. It's become [an] essential instrument for climate investment. And the work of Lutz will help bring education into that equation that offers important global funding mechanism.

How does Wolfgang’s work help us achieve a better and brighter future?

The methods and datasets, which Lutz has developed, have opened the doors for better appreciation of the benefit of education in many areas as well.

Think of the health of populations. Think of social development are more inclusive, more sustainable economic growth. The essential point that Lutz has been making is really that near-term investments in education evolves very slowly. It takes time and effort to educate people.

But they surely translate in the long run into massive improvements of the human talent and human capital. And that’s the driver for sustainable development. And there is no shortcut to that investment in the future of humanity.