Population
Health
Well-Being
Demographic Dividend
Quick Facts
Location
Global/Pan-African in scope
Leads
Mahesh Karra (Columbia/PopFam) with David Canning (Harvard University) and Joshua Wilde
Prospective Consortium Collaborators
AFIDEP, AidData, and EconInsight
The Specifics
What we are doing
What We Are Doing
We built a macrosimulation model - often referred to as the Canning-Karra-Wilde (CKW) model - that estimates the economic impact of a country's demographic transition. The model was originally developed for the World Bank's 2015 book Africa's Demographic Transition: Dividend or Disaster?, using Nigeria to calibrate and demonstrate the approach, and was extended in a 2017 Population and Development Review paper. Since then, we've presented and applied the model in policy workshops across Africa to help governments and technical teams think through the potential economic gains from investments in family planning, health, and human capital.
What We Learned
Learnings
Countries that accelerate fertility decline alongside investments in education, health, and labor markets stand to see substantial GDP gains - but the size of that "dividend" depends heavily on those complementary investments, not on fertility decline alone. This has become a central talking point in our policy workshops with government stakeholders.
The Impact
Impact
The model has anchored multiple high-level policy workshops - including ones hosted by the Population Reference Bureau and by UAPS - helping shape national conversations on population and development planning in the countries where it's been presented. It's increasingly cited as a foundational tool for demographic dividend policy analysis in the region. Most recently, the model helped inform the Gates Foundation's own estimates of the return on investment of scaling family planning across 54 low- and middle-income countries - a study that found a 59:1 return ratio, driven in part by the long-term GDP gains the CKW model projects
Research & Publications
2015
Economic Effects of the Demographic Dividend," in Africa's Demographic Transition: Dividend or Disaster?
2017
The Effect of Fertility Decline on Economic Growth in Africa: A Macrosimulation Model," Population and Development Review
Author(s)
Canning, Karra, and Wilde
Author(s
Canning, Karra, and Wilde
2023
Liberian Women Count: Evidence from a Macrosimulation of the Gender Dividend
Author(s)
Mahesh Karra, Mitja Del Bono, Joshua Wilde, Wendy Cunningham, Sarika Gupta
Workshops
PopPov Workshop Examines Benefit of Canning-Karra-Wilde Model in Policy Planning in Africa
8th African Population Workshop