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April 30, 2026 | News | Blog@MPIDR
Johann Behrendt was a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock from February to April. He is currently studying psychology in Leipzig. In the MPIDR blog, he describes his experiences as a research intern gaining an insight into a scientific discipline other than his own. more
April 28, 2026 | News | PHD
Chia-Jung Tsai from the Laboratory of Migration and Mobility at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR), successfully defended her doctoral thesis, “Factors Shaping Public Attitudes and Responses to Refugee and Immigrant Populations: Examining the Interplay of Demographics, Media, and Contextual Influences“, at the University Pompeu Fabra. Her findings contribute to our understanding of how public opinion toward refugees and immigrants is shaped by various factors, such as the media, demographic composition, and the COVID-19 pandemic. more
April 23, 2026 | Press Release
Researchers investigated whether men or women have fewer children. Using international datasets, they demonstrate that imbalances in population structure, particularly an increasing proportion of men, affect male fertility. While men used to have higher fertility than women globally, this has reversed, and women have and will have a higher fertility rate than men. The scientists offer recommendations to counteract the social implications of this trend. more
April 21, 2026 | News
The Max Planck Society is launching a 6-year research project to explore how education must change to account for rapid societal transformations. As of April 2026, the “EduTrack” project initiates a collaboration between researchers across three Max Planck Institutes. Experts from demography, history, computer science and political science will collaborate to produce fresh insights on digital education, the globalisation of knowledge, as well as the impact of education on social mobility, crisis resilience, and democracy. more
April 16, 2026 | News | New Publication
A study by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) and the Norwegian Institute of Public Health found that spouses tend to be very similar in terms of their risk of separation. Marriage is shaped not only by a person's own background, but also by that of their partner. The analysis of over 350,000 Norwegian marriages reveals a previously underestimated phenomenon: people with a similar risk of divorce tend to marry one another. more
April 02, 2026 | News | Overview
Here is an overview of the latest reading recommendations for papers published by scientists at the MPIDR. more
March 31, 2026 | Defo News
If the birth rate in Germany were to rise immediately to the replacement level of 2.1, the population would still shrink by 25 per cent. The reason: a ‘lagging effect’ that depends heavily on the age structure. In the first article of this issue of Demographic Research, a researcher has calculated how populations in different countries and regions would develop under this assumption. In the second article, a research team examines how climate change, pandemics, inflation and war influence our life satisfaction. The third article challenges a common assumption: that women are considered to be better integrated into society than men. However, this does not seem to apply to all age groups, as a recent study we present here shows. more
March 25, 2026 | News | Kick off
In September 2025, Ben Malinga John became the head of the Max Planck Partner Group UNIMAX at the University of Malawi in Zomba. Previously, he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in the Laboratory Fertility and Well-Being. In February, he and his colleagues from Department of Sociology and Population at the University of Malawi hosted a kickoff workshop for the new Partner Group "UNIMAX: New Perspectives On The Demography Of The Family In Sub-Saharan Africa". The event, convened in Blantyre, focused on "Advancing New Perspectives and Methodologies in Population, Health, and Family Research in Sub-Saharan Africa". more
March 12, 2026 | News | New Faces at MPIDR
The Laboratory of Demographic Data welcomes Moradhvaj Dhakad as a new team member. Moradhvaj is joining the Datalab as a scientist researcher as part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship program. Prior to joining MPIDR, he worked at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), University of Vienna and the Vienna Institute of Demography (VID) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. He completed his PhD in Population Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi and holds a Master’s in the same field from the International Institute for Population Sciences in Mumbai. During his time at MPIDR, Moradhvaj will work on a scientific project focusing on the burden of adult mortality in India, with a particular focus on socioeconomic inequality. more
March 12, 2026 | News
Moradhvaj Dhakad joined the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in November 2025. During his time at IIASA, he collaborated with Erich Striessnig, Nandita Saikia, Samir K.C. and Wolfgang Lutz to explore why mortality among working-age adults remains high in India despite rapid economic growth. They found that education, at both the individual and community levels, was more strongly associated with lower premature mortality than income or household wealth. more