Detailed description

The Laboratory started in 2007, coordinates a group of scholars with backgrounds in history, geography, demography, and statistics to pursue comparative and interdisciplinary scientific projects that bring together various aspects of historical demographic research.

A recent initiative of the Laboratory is the Mosaic project to extend the reach of census microdata research beyond the English-speaking and Scandinavian world to Continental and Eastern Europe. This initiative builds on the foundation of collaborative historical data projects and the modern micro-sample collection and distribution pioneered by the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS) at the University of Minnesota and the North Atlantic Population Project (NAPP).

The main research topics of the Laboratory include: explaining the diversity, persistence, and change of historical family systems; discovering the origins of the longevity revolution; understanding fertility differences within and across populations; and a new interest in documenting the residential and economic segregation of ethnic and religious groups across Europe and over time.

Gaining an understanding of the determinants of family systems of the past is also of importance for contemporary demography. The increasing inclination to view European family-demographic systems as "geocultures" resilient to change ("geocultures" take their coloring from the customs, traditions, and history of a particular area) suggests that the proper understanding of contemporary regional residential, family, childbearing, and even mortality patterns may necessitate the critical historical demographic approach to be applied to the past. In order to predict the behaviors of different populations, we need to understand the extent to which these forms were persistent in the past and to what extent they were plastic, adapting to changing economic and social conditions.

To fulfill these objectives, the Laboratory developed a range of distinct yet complementary and intellectually interconnected research projects. They can be grouped along four major research areas:

1. Diversity and Change in European Historical Family Systems
2. Fertility Dynamics in Historical and Spatial Perspective
3. Ancient Mediterranean Populations between Structure and Change
4. The Origins of the Modern Rise in Life Expectancy

In addition, the Laboratory is committed to fostering the collection and sharing of population history data to serve the global scientific community and support our own research projects on living arrangements, fertility, nuptiality, and mortality. The Laboratory’s efforts in this regard are channeled through the fifth research area, “Collection and Dissemination of Population History Data”, and especially via the newly launched Mosaic Project (www.censusmosaic.org). The results of all these activities can be used by the international, interdisciplinary research public for comparative studies of historical populations, e.g. by historians, demographers, economists, and other researchers.

By searching for historical origins of contemporary diversity in family patterns in Europe, the Laboratory encourages mutual exchange with several other units within the MPIDR, particularly with the Laboratory of Economic and Social Demography. More direct forms of cooperation are also taking place between the Population History unit and the Laboratory of Survival and Longevity.