Educational Structure of the Austrian Population and Households Up To 2040

The inclusion of human capital in estimating future demographic developments is becoming increasingly important, as educational differences in fertility, mortality and migration have a major impact on population development and thus on economic trends (e.g., in the housing market). In this paper, education-specific differences are applied for the first time at household level for projections for Austria up to 2040. Based on a multi-state population forecast, headership ratios are used to calculate household projections after the highest level of education. The four scenarios considered differ in assumptions about the educational development of the population (baseline scenario and scenario with increase in higher education) and about the further development of the headship rates (constant and trend scenario). The number of households will grow continuously until 2040 due to the continuing decline in household size. The strongest increase is expected in the scenario in which the educational level of the population rises and the trend of the household formation continues: although the population growth is lower than in the baseline scenario, this is compensated by the increase in the proportion of the population with university degrees and the resulting reduction in the size of the household in this segment. The inclusion of human capital in household projections can thus be used to estimate future developments in the housing market.