The demography of human development and climate change vulnerability: A projection exercise

We propose a methodological framework aimed at obtaining projections of the Human Development Index (HDI) that can be used to assess the degree of vulnerability of future societies to extreme climatic events. By combining recent developments in the modeling and projection of population by age, sex, and educational attainment, our modeling set-up ensures that the different components of the HDI are projected using a self-contained, consistent modeling effort. We develop scenarios that correspond to the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) developed in the context of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and thus present a projection framework that can be used to expand the evaluation of the potential mitigation and adaptation challenges associated with climate change in general, and with vulnerability to natural disasters in particular.