Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) in Rostock investigates the structure and dynamics of populations. The Institute’s researchers explore issues of political relevance, such as demographic change, 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. The MPIDR is one of the largest demographic research bodies in Europe and is a worldwide leader in the study of populations.

Contact

Konrad-Zuse-Straße 1
18057 Rostock
Phone: +49 381 2081-0
Fax: +49 381 2081-280

PhD opportunities

This institute has an International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS):

IMPRS for Population, Health and Data Science

In addition, there is the possibility of individual doctoral research. Please contact the directors or research group leaders at the Institute.

Department Population Health, Fertility and Well-Being

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Department Digital and Computational Demography

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People from diverse ethnic backgrounds are enjoying themselves outdoors on the grass in the city park. They are laughing and looking at each other. They are dressed in colorful and vibrant clothing.

Study with data from four countries shows: accelerated demographic change is creating significant differences in the number of relatives

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A rear view of an elderly couple walking through a meadow on an autumn day.

In the U.S., the monthly payments increase the longer one works—researchers have now examined whether delaying retirement is financially worthwhile.

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A couple in the kitchen. They are fighting.

New study reveals the impact of political preferences on relationships

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A picture collage showing a woman in a professional leadership position on one side and a father sitting at a children's table with his young daughter playing at drinking coffee on the other.

A study examines the relationship between gender roles and the desire to have children in Scandinavia

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The finger of a very old hand is clasped by the hand of a baby.

Study shows: Investments in education offset the negative impact of low fertility

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A swipe to the right, a swipe to the left – never before have there been so many options for finding a partner, at least if you believe the promises of dating apps. But how free is our choice of partner really? And what about deciding whether and when to have children? Julia Leesch and Nicole Hiekel at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research are studying exactly these questions.

More than one-third of the world’s population uses Facebook at least once a month. In the process, Facebook collects a lot of data from its users, which represents a valuable but barely tapped source for scientific research. Emilio Zagheni and his team at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock are using social media data in an attempt to track and predict international migration.

It’s easy to overlook the marginalized. Social exclusion can have very different causes and consequences – also in the context of migration. Six Max Planck Institutes have now joined forces for a cross-institute project focusing on the topic. The project examines, among other things, the question of why immigrants often lose their good health. It explores what prompts Somalis to move from Europe to Kenya, and what consequences the deal between the EU and Turkey might have for the rights of asylum seekers in Greece. Their common aim is to uncover exclusion and develop fair rules to regulate migration.

Eternal life lasts a very long time. Nevertheless, Ralf Schaible from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock can already affirm that the freshwater polyp Hydra comes quite close to this ideal. In a long-term experiment initiated by the institute’s Director James W. Vaupel, he and his colleagues investigate why, under certain circumstances, Hydra doesn’t age.

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Pandemic childcare burden: Study reveals increased mental health strain on mothers

2024 Hiekel, Nicole;  Kühn, Mine

Social and Behavioural Sciences

During the COVID-19 pandemic, parents were suddenly without formal childcare, which put considerable pressure on mothers in particular. A recent study from the MPI for Demographic Research (MPIDR) examines the childcare arrangements changes during the pandemic and the subsequent impact on parents‘ mental health. Mothers who continued to be primarily caregivers for their children reported increased stress and exhaustion during the pandemic. In contrast, fathers experienced mental health benefits when their female partner continued to take the majority of childcare responsibilities.

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Insights into the last year of life

2023 Ebeling, Marcus; Meyer, Anna C.; Modig, Karin

Social and Behavioural Sciences

Little is known about how people spend the last year of their lives. The results of the study show that longer life is associated with a longer dying process and that most deaths are not what is often called a "good" death. Longer life is partly the result of a longer dying process. End-of-life trajectories call for a discussion about how we want to die in an era of increasing life expectancy and ageing societies.

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What data from online genealogies reveal about historical life expectancy

2022 Alburez-Gutierrez, Diego; Stelter, Robert

Social and Behavioural Sciences

Online genealogy data are beset by a number of biases that affect their representativity. Diego Alburez-Gutierrez from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research and his colleague Robert Stelter show this with the example of a user-generated dataset from the FamiLinx project. They calculate the remaining life expectancy of men aged 30 who lived in the German Empire between 1500 and 1910 and the Netherlands between 1600 and 1909. Their work highlights the need to develop bias-correction methods to analyze historical population trends derived from crowdsourced digital data.

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Covid-19: Life expectancy decreased in most high-income countries

2021 Jdanov, Dmitri A.

Social and Behavioural Sciences

A team including researchers from the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research is collecting mortality data in a new database. These data allow to follow the course of the Covid-19 pandemic only a few weeks later. An analysis for 37 high-income countries based on the data has shown that life expectancy decreased in 31 of the countries in 2020. A total of about 28 million more years of life were lost than expected. And the years of life lost associated with the Covid-19 pandemic were more than five times higher than those associated with the seasonal influenza epidemic in 2015. 

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Life expectancy: Why is the US doing so poorly?

2020 Myrskylä, Mikko

Social and Behavioural Sciences

Life expectancy in the United States is lagging behind other industrialized nations. Recently, US life expectancy has even decreased. A new study by the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research now shows: Mortality from cardiovascular diseases was a more decisive factor for this development than the often-mentioned opioid crisis.

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