Bevölkerungsdynamik und Nachhaltiges Wohlbefinden

The Lab of Population Dynamics and Sustainable Well-Being seeks to understand how populations evolve under conditions of inequality, uncertainty, and rapid social, environmental, and technological change. One of its distinctive contributions includes integrating substantive demographic questions with methodological advances and data innovation, thus enabling a forward-looking view of population and intergenerational processes.

At its core, the Lab examines population dynamics through three deeply interconnected lenses: health and survival, family and life course trajectories, and the reciprocal relationships between populations and their environments. Across these domains, a unifying concern is how demographic processes and inequalities shape the sustainability of populations, not only in terms of size and growth, but also with respect to well-being and the distribution of opportunities and risks.

A defining feature of the Lab is its commitment to advancing methods that broaden the empirical scope of demography. It develops approaches that can work with incomplete, imperfect, or novel data, making it possible to study populations that have often been overlooked. These approaches include innovations in measuring mortality, estimating fertility, and reconstructing kinship networks, alongside the integration of survey data, administrative data, and original data collections. These efforts are supported by computational techniques such as machine learning, Bayesian modeling, and microsimulation. Together, these tools make it possible to analyze complex and evolving processes, including life course trajectories, intergenerational relationships, and patterns of longevity.

The Lab has also developed an explicit focus on uncertainty and predictability in demographic processes. Rather than treating variability as noise, it investigates how uncertainty itself is socially structured and unevenly distributed. This perspective is particularly evident in research on mortality forecasting, life course prediction, and the long-term effects of shocks such as conflicts and environmental crises. By incorporating cohort and life course approaches, the Lab captures how exposures accumulate and interact across the life course, shaping both individual lives and population-level outcomes.

Sustainability is a major thread that connects all research areas. The Lab approaches sustainability not only as an environmental concern, but also as a multidimensional concept encompassing health, intergenerational support systems, and the equitable distribution of resources and risks. The work on population-environment interactions benefits from the increasing availability of georeferenced environmental data, and highlights how demographic factors both influence and are influenced by climate change, environmental exposures, and patterns of energy use. At the same time, the Lab expands the notion of environment to include digital contexts, recognizing the growing role of technology in shaping demographic behaviors and inequalities.

As part of its focus on sustainable populations, the Lab also advances demographic science by examining long-term population processes and the interdependencies between micro-level experiences and macro-level outcomes. This perspective strengthens the capacity to model and forecast population change, while also accounting for the ways in which inequalities, environmental transformations, and technological developments alter demographic trajectories.