“There is more to education than the picture that you typically see in most reports,” says Parfait Eloundou-Enyegue, professor of development sociology at Cornell University, in this week’s podcast. “And this picture comes from looking at education not as an outcome but as an institution.”

Eloundou-Enyegue describes education as a potent force for development among countries poised to enter the demographic transition. Taking advantage of that transition – when fertility growth declines and the proportion of very young “dependents” shrinks in comparison to the working age population – can result in a “demographic dividend” where successive cohorts of the population move through their most economically productive years. Yet, the benefits of this dividend are not a given.

We ought not to view the demographic transition simply as a change in family size, Eloundou-Enyegue explains, but rather as a social transformation in three institutions of family, education, and work. “The challenge, as we document fertility transition,” he continued, “is to see how all these institutions evolve together to see the new economic opportunities that arise in that process, and to see how schools can capitalize on these opportunities.”

Creating enough jobs to meet the demands of an exploding work force is especially difficult for many countries. More closely tailoring primary school education for marketable skills, as well as transformations in the expectations of parents with more focus on the quality of education, could make education more valuable and create new jobs.

Eloundou-Enyegue believes this broader understanding of education as an institution could help countries on the cusp of the demographic transition better leverage the economic benefits of their young populations.