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.

New Faces at the MPIDR | October 20, 2026

Welcome, Johanna Kranz!

Johanna Kranz joins the team of the Research Coordination. She will work as a foreign language secretary and support Christina Westphal who is MPIDR’s research coordinator and IMPRS-PHDS coordinator. More

October

Scientific Presentations

SeminarTalks@DCD

Pablo Gracia from the Autonomous University of Barcelona gives a talk. 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

Fertility and Well-Being

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

Selected Publications

Schubert, H.-A.; Dudel, C.; Kolobova, M.; Myrskylä, M.:

Revisiting the J-shape: human development and fertility in the United States Demography 61:6, 1949–1973. (2024)

Carollo, A.; Putter, H.; Eilers, P. H. C.; Gampe, J.:

Analysis of time-to-event data with two time scales: an application to transitions out of cohabitation Sociological Methods and Research, 1–31. (2025)

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

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