Bilal Barakat

Meeting the Sustainable Development Goals leads to lower world population growth

Significance The future of world population growth matters for future human well-being and interactions with the natural environment. We show the extent to which world population growth could be reduced by fully implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) whose health and education targets have direct and indirect consequences on future mortality and fertility trends. Although this assessment is consistent with the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways scenarios used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change context, it is inconsistent with the prediction range of the United Nations projections for which we present sensitivity analyses and suggests that their range is likely too narrow. Given our assumptions, the SDGs have a sizable effect on global population growth, providing an additional rationale for vigorously pursuing their implementation. Here we show the extent to which the expected world population growth could be lowered by successfully implementing the recently agreed-upon Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The SDGs include specific quantitative targets on mortality, reproductive health, and education for all girls by 2030, measures that will directly and indirectly affect future demographic trends. Based on a multidimensional model of population dynamics that stratifies national populations by age, sex, and level of education with educational fertility and mortality differentials, we translate these goals into SDG population scenarios, resulting in population sizes between 8.2 and 8.7 billion in 2100. Because these results lie outside the 95% prediction range given by the 2015 United Nations probabilistic population projections, we complement the study with sensitivity analyses of these projections that suggest that those prediction intervals are too narrow because of uncertainty in baseline data, conservative assumptions on correlations, and the possibility of new policies influencing these trends. Although the analysis presented here rests on several assumptions about the implementation of the SDGs and the persistence of educational, fertility, and mortality differentials, it quantitatively illustrates the view that demography is not destiny and that policies can make a decisive difference. In particular, advances in female education and reproductive health can contribute greatly to reducing world population growth.

Education and Intra-Alliance Conflict: Contrasting and Comparing Popular Struggles in Apartheid South Africa and Palestine

Much recent research has been directed at illuminating the role of education in major conflicts between ethnic groups. It is increasingly well understood that education does not necessarily have a positive, peace-supporting influence, but that the wrong kind of education can serve to reinforce divisions. However, in many conflicts there are multiple fault lines. Even if one central antagonism between two broad groupings can be identified, numerous tensions and divergent interests may exist within each of these groupings. This study examines the hypothesis that the notion of the ‘two faces of education’ extends to such ‘conflicts within the conflict’. In other words, with regard to tensions within groups on the ‘same side’, education and schooling may also serve either as a unifying force or as a cause of violent disagreement – or both at the same time. This article presents the results of extracting both kind of themes – education as divisive or unifying – from a thorough review of the literature on two case studies: South African education during the anti-apartheid struggle, and the development of Palestinian education in exile and under occupation. While significant differences exist, there are also some common patterns, such as the use of educational privileges to co-opt part of the opposition, the continuation of educational class differentials within broad alliances during and after conflict, and the role of ambiguity in educational discourse in opposition. Both cases support the conclusion that education and schooling can play an ambivalent role at all levels of complex conflicts, and that research on ‘education and conflict’ cannot afford to ignore this complexity.

What do we mean by school entry age? Conceptual ambiguity and its implications: the example of Indonesia

ABSTRACT The age pattern of school entry reflects a complex social and empirical reality that is inadequately captured by a single number. Recognising these complexities in national and international research and policy discourse raises important but neglected questions around the identification of vulnerable groups, the relative value of pre-primary and primary education, as well as the normative powers and responsibilities of governments vis-à-vis parents, and the international educational community vis-à-vis both. This is illustrated by the example of Indonesia, where the official age norm for primary school entry is widely disregarded in practice, with a majority of children starting school one or even two years earlier. Crucially, it is the compliant children entering at the statutory age who tend to be from more disadvantaged households, and enjoy no benefit in educational outcomes from their greater maturity.

The Role of Education in Enabling the Sustainable Development Agenda

The Role of Education in Enabling the Sustainable Development Agenda explores the relationship between education and other key sectors of development in the context of the new global Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) agenda. While it is widely understood that there is a positive relationship between education and other dimensions of development, and populations around the world show a clear desire for more and better education, education remains an under-financed and under-prioritised sector within development. When education does make it onto the agenda, investment is usually diverted towards increasing access to formal schooling, without focusing on the intrinsic value of education as a tool for development within the international development community more broadly.

Credit where credit is due: an approach to education returns based on Shapley values

ABSTRACT We propose the use of methods based on the Shapley value to assess the fact that private returns to lower levels of educational attainment should be credited with part of the returns from higher attainment levels, since achieving primary education is a necessary condition to enter secondary and tertiary educational levels. We apply the proposed adjustment to a global dataset of private returns to different educational attainment levels and find that the corrected returns to education imply a large shift of returns from tertiary to primary schooling in countries at all income levels.

Education Trends in India: Recent Census Results in Context

India has experienced large changes, both relative and absolute, in the education of her population in recent decades. Literacy levels have been steadily rising. During the last decade alone, it is estimated that the number of out-of-school children has been reduced by as much as 17 million. However, not least due to sheer population size, India continues to contribute a large share to global levels of non-enrolment and other areas of concern in global educational development. In particular, while socio-economic and regional inequality are of course also present in other countries, the educational development trajectory of India is something of an outlier among large emerging economies in terms of its persistent and deep polarisation. The present study attempts to trace India’s educational development during recent decades by juxtaposing statistical data from a wide variety of sources, including census aggregates, administrative school statistics, the school census, and various household surveys. With their different underlying education measures (literacy, enrolment, attainment) and different methodologies, complete agreement between these sources cannot be expected. Nevertheless, analysing their points of agreement as well as their inconsistencies can only improve our understanding of the underlying educational trends. Where possible, micro-data are analysed within a household and/or family context, to gain insights on intergenerational transmission of education, and its evolution over time. Results from the most recent 2011 national census are analysed in this context of existing trends. This includes census estimates of literacy rates and their gender differentials.

Maximizing female labor force participation in a stationary population

As many European countries have to cope with a shrinking and aging labor force, one important goal of redistributing work is to increase female labor force participation. In some countries, however, this increase could come at the cost of a reduced fertility rate as childcare facilities might be rare or institutional settings and social support are not sufficiently family friendly. In this paper we investigate how and especially at which ages female labor force participation could be increased in a country such as Austria, with an apparently strong negative correlation between childbearing and labor force participation, without reducing fertility even further. Our results indicate that an increase in female labor force participation is indeed possible if the participation rate remains low in the most fertile ages. It turns out, however, that the optimal labor force participation for females strongly depends on the initial fertility pattern of the female population.

From Assessment to Planning: Hope for TVET in Uganda

This chapter aims to examine the relationship between needs/skills assessment and a holistic approach to [technical and vocational education and training] TVET programming, using northern Uganda as a case-study. The first section provides a brief overview of the key features of the conflict. The second section describes recent and existing TVET initiatives. The third section discusses the structure of [survey for war-affected youth] SWAY as an outstanding and timely example of needs assessment during conflict, making some critiques of its limitations. The findings are discussed and the recommendations reviewed. The fourth section looks at the upcoming TVET initiatives in Uganda and the way that SWAY can improve the effectiveness of these initiatives. The concluding remarks include general recommendations for assessment and planning practices that can improve TVET programming in post-conflict situations.