Scientific Presentations
LabTalks@DCD
Department of Digital and Computational Demography
Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), Rostock, Germany, October 01, 2025
11:00 AM: Talk with Paige Park - Next-Generation Mortality Forecasting with Deep Learning
Room 400
Abstract
Deep learning is transforming fields like chemistry, engineering, and medicine, but its application to social science fields like demography remains limited. This study assesses deep learning as an emerging approach to mortality forecasting, a core area in demographic research. The paper addresses why and how deep learning performs better than three well-known baselines for mortality forecasting. First, it evaluates the relationship between model architecture and data pooling. Second, it provides a detailed country-level performance analysis, identifying contexts where deep learning underperforms and suggesting possible remedies. Third, it discusses the broader applicability and potential of deep learning methods in demography. The findings underscore the potential of deep learning to improve demographic forecasts and invite broader reflection on the role of computational and AI-driven methods in population studies.
About
Paige Park is a doctoral candidate in Demography at the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation focuses on the emergence of artificial intelligence and explores how the technology might be used to improve population prediction, including using deep learning to forecast mortality, fine-tuning large language models on big text data, and using information-rich spatial embeddings to predict demographic outcomes. She is also interested in employing explainable AI techniques to understand both how models arrive at predictions and what we might learn about complex social processes as a result. Paige is a Data Science and AI Fellow at Berkeley's D-Lab and holds an M.A. in Statistics from UC Berkeley.
Register to Take Part
You would like to attend the Online Seminar Talk? You are very welcome. Please register by writing an e-mail to office-zagheni@demogr.mpg.de.
Online Seminar Talk, October, 1st from 11:00 a.m. to 12 p.m. (Rostock time)