Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

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.

Family | October 07, 2026

Parenthood with Multiple Partners

A new study by researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) and the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) reveals that gender and social background influence the complexity of families in different ways throughout people's lives. Even in highly gender-equal Nordic countries, social inequalities in family formation persist. More

September

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October

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, ... More

All Events

Call for Research Contributions

Rethinking Fertility Relationally

Recommended Readings | October 14, 2026

Different Routes into a First Partnership: How women with migration histories enter cohabitation and marriage in Finland

Introduction to our research groups

Population Health

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

Selected Publications

Sobotka, T.; Zeman, K.; Jasilioniene, A.; Winkler-Dworak, M.; Brzozowska, Z.; Alustiza Galarza, A.; Németh, L.; Jdanov, D. A.:

Pandemic roller-coaster? Birth trends in higher-income countries during the COVID-19 pandemic Population and Development Review 50:S1, 23–58. (2024)

Jasilionis, D.; van Raalte, A. A.; Klüsener, S.; Grigoriev, P.:

The underwhelming German life expectancy European Journal of Epidemiology 38:8, 839–850. (2023)

More Publications

Call for Papers

Special Collection | Demographic Research | Kinship Demography: Structures, Dynamics, and Inequalities

New Issue 3/2026 available | October 06, 2026

The Quarterly German Newsletter

Questions and Answers

Being a Researcher at the MPIDR

Working at MPIDR

Life & Research in Rostock

Career

Open Positions

Postdoc/Research Scientist in the Kinship Inequalities Research Group
University of Hong Kong – Max Planck PhD Studentship in Population Studies
Population and Social Data Science Summer Incubator Program More

A peer-reviewed, open-access journal of population sciences

Perspectives

Blog@MPIDR

Doctoral Program

International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health and Data Science

New Faces at the MPIDR | October 09, 2026

Welcome, Jason Bonham!

The Research Group Reproductive Ageing welcomes Jason Paul Bonham as a new team member. Prior to joining MPIDR, he worked at the sociology department of the University of Chicago where he completed a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Demography and Economics of Aging. Jason studies the history of demography. Hereby, he uses individual-level population data, archival material, and social theory to research how institutions organize fertility behavior across time and place. In the group Reproductive Aging, he will consider how these institutional objectives and policies expose males to their reproductive ageing through delayed fatherhood. More