Research Group
Reproductive Ageing
At a Glance
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Detailed Description
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With the widespread trend of childbearing at later ages comes the correspondingly larger significance of reproductive aging, a decline in reproductive function within individuals. Due to its mostly negative consequences for fertility and health, reproductive aging has been integral to the concerns about fertility postponement and longer post-reproductive lifespan. For instance, the deterioration of gamete quality during reproductive aging underpins the decline in fecundity (the biologic ability to reproduce) and the parental age effect on adverse health outcomes in offspring.
Yet, to realize the ambition to delay reproductive aging and curtail its negative health impacts, a first step is to overcome a prevailing assumption: Reproductive aging unfolds at a similar pace across individuals and is confined to females. Stemming from a model of finite and nonrenewable oocytes in female mammals now challenged by new evidence from biomedicine, the assumption does not align itself with the large heterogeneity in the pace of reproductive aging beyond genetic differences. Furthermore, the assumption masks the clear presence and significance of male reproductive aging in the context of human evolution and in the contemporary societies. As a result, we have much to learn about how reproductive aging unfolds in diverse sociodemographic contexts.
To contribute novel evidence necessary to refine such assumption, Research Group Reproductive Aging will pursue questions hitherto under-examined questions in demography.
- How does the heterogeneity in human reproductive aging arise across the life course?
- What are the consequences of reproductive aging beyond immediate outcomes in individual health and fecundity?
- How does male reproductive aging shape fertility and children's outcomes both short and long term?
We will harness theory, data, and methods from biological and social sciences, where exciting recent advances in reproduction, aging and health research have been made, but so far largely disjointed. We will draw on theoretical frameworks useful for linking health, life course events, and reproduction, such as the social determinants of health, developmental origins of health and disease, the life course theory, and the life history theory.
The interdisciplinary approach will be joined by comparative approach drawing on data from different populations and species. We will use longitudinal survey data, where repeated observations of health status and life events can be linked to the markers of reproductive aging. We will develop new methods to identify reproductive aging in prescription and diagnosis data, which can then be linked to other rich information available within register data. Particular efforts will be made to use data from Global South, where reproductive aging has so far received little attention despite its growing role in future. Whenever possible, we will take an active role in new data collection in both Global North and South, to contribute more data availability in future on reproductive aging.
Our overarching priority will be to highlight pulation-level impact and demographic implications of reproductive aging. In doing so, the Group's works will contribute to better understand bio-social mechanisms and demographic significance of reproductive aging.