The present report, World Population Monitoring, 2003: Population Education and Development, has been prepared in response to Economic and Social Council resolution 1995/55, in which the Council endorsed the terms of reference and the topic-oriented and prioritized multi-year work programme proposed by the Commission on Population and Development at its twenty-eighth session.1 According to the multi-year work programme, which was to serve as a framework for the assessment of the progress achieved in the implementation of the Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development (1994)2, a series of reports on a special set of themes would be prepared annually. The Commission, in its decision 2000/1,3 decided that the special theme for the Commission at its thirty-sixth session in 2003 should be “Population, educationand development”, which is the subject of the present report.

Education plays a key role in national development and is an essential component of national well-being. Through education, individuals are empowered to make choices that affect their health and survivorship and that of their children, as well as the number and spacing of their children and their place of residence and work. The Programme of Action of the International Conference on Population and Development called on Governments to ensure universal access to primary education before 2015 (para. 11.6) and ensure access by females to education beyond the primary level (para. 11.8). Education has an impact on society through a variety of paths. The present report emphasizes one of those paths: the interrelationships between education and population, and their resulting effects on development. The report investigates such topics as trends in population, including trends in the total and school-age populations and trends in school enrolment, literacy and educational attainment; education and entry into reproductive life; the interrelationships between education and fertility;education, health and mortality; education and international migration; and finally progress in meeting the international goals. The presentation of each topic is followed by a concluding section that summarizes the major points and messages of the study.

As requested by the Economic and Social Council, the Population Division, Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, annually prepares the world population monitoring report on the theme of that year’s session of the Commission. The full report is accompanied by a summarized version, the “concise report” (E/CN.9/2003/2). Each of the reports is presented and discussed at the Commission and then revised for publication. The present volume is the revised version of the full report on the theme “Population, education and development”.4

World Population Monitoring, 2003 was prepared by the Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations. The Population Division gratefully acknowledges the UNESCO Institute for Statistics for its contribution to chapter VI on achieving the goals of Education for All.