We study the structure and dynamics of populations and explore issues of political relevance, such as aging, fertility, and the redistribution of work over the life course, as well as digitization and the use of new data sources for the estimation of migration flows.
News | September 30, 2026
New Horizon Europe Project LIFe Traces Inequalities Across Lives and Generations
How much do the circumstances of your birth shape where you end up as an adult? The project LIFe (Intergenerational Fairness: A Life-Course Approach) brings together research and policy-analysis institutions across Europe to examine how advantages and disadvantages build up over entire lifetimes and across generations. MPIDR’s Department of Digital and Computational Demography will take a leading role in modelling demographic and health developments. More
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Preparatory courses at the MPIDR
European Doctoral School of Demography (EDSD)
The European Doctoral School of Demography is an eleven-month sponsored program that is offered every year aiming to provide students with an appropriate high-level education in demography to pursue their doctoral studies. Students will acquire a solid knowledge base on the causes and consequences of demographic change, population data, statistical and mathematical demography, as well as modeling, simulation, and forecasting. More
All Events
Anniversary
30 Years MPIDR in Rostock
Recommended Readings | September 14, 2026
Comparison of Microsimulated and Register-based Kinship Data
Introduction to our research groups
Family Demography in Sub-Saharan Africa
Press Release | September 28, 2026
Tracking Researchers in Ukraine Through War and Armed Conflict
A study based on publication data traces how researchers moved within Ukraine and across borders between 2009 and 2022, with conflict-affected regions losing scholars while others became increasingly important destinations. These shifts were already underway after Russia illegally annexed Crimea and fighting began in the Donbas in 2014, underscoring that scholarly mobility during conflict cannot simply be understood as a matter of free choice. More
Selected Publications
Conte Keivabu, R.; Widmann, T.:
The effect of temperature on language complexity: evidence from seven million parliamentary speeches Iscience 27:6, 1–13. (2024)
Hünteler, B. M.; Hank, K.; Alburez-Gutierrez, D.; Leopold, T.:
A typology of young adults' nuclear and extended family relations in the United States Journal of Marriage and Family 88:1, 284–298. (2026)
More Publications
Perspectives
Blog@MPIDR
Jobs & Fellowships
Questions and Answers
Being a Researcher at the MPIDR
Working at MPIDR
Life & Research in Rostock
New Issue 2/2026 available | June 30, 2026
The Quarterly German Newsletter
A peer-reviewed, open-access journal of population sciences
MPIDR
Online Databases
Doctoral Program
International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health and Data Science
New Publication | September 24, 2026
Student Migration to the UK set to Decline by 2030
British universities face a potential funding crisis by 2030, as the number of international undergraduate students—is expected to stagnate or decline. This is the conclusion of a new study by University College London (UCL), the University of Liverpool, and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR). More