Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Human Capital

Established in January 2011 and located in Vienna (Austria), the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital aims at becoming a world leader in demographic analyses of human capital formation and its impact on society, the economy, and the environment. Fundamental to the Centre's research is the belief that education is the key to an equitable and sustainable world.

The primary goal of the Wittgenstein Centre is to better understand the role of human capital and the production of human "well-being." Human capital refers to the human resource base relating to the number of people and their changing structure in terms of age, gender, location, level of education, health status, and cognitive skill. Ultimately, the Centre's findings will provide a sound scientific foundation for decision-making procedures on many levels and in different sectors of society.

The Centre is a collaborative effort between the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW), the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), the new Research Institute on Human Capital and Development, and the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration (WU). It combines the partners' strengths in the fields of demography, human capital formation, and provides an analysis of the benefits of education in order to establish a globally leading centre in this field. Read more about the Center in bridges, the online publication of the Embassy’s Office of Science and Technology, at www.ostina.org.