Demography matters: the human life from birth to death

IIASA Population and Just Societies Program scientists will present the latest and currently ongoing projects in their demographic research areas in the seminar for the students of Austrian Study Foundation on 29-30 September.

Demography deals with the lives of people from birth to death. The original and still current goal of demography is the statistical description of human populations in terms of their demographic structure: its composition (by sex, age, and other characteristics such as education or marital status) at a given point in time, and the demographic events that take place within (births, deaths, marriages, etc.). In recent decades, demographers have expanded their research from the population level to the micro level (i.e., individual human lives). This expansion has been
accompanied by an increasing connection to other disciplines concerned with human life, such as sociology, psychology, economics, and political science from the social sciences, and medicine or biology from the natural sciences.

The workshop will provide students with an overview of demography in general and insights into the most exciting research questions currently being addressed. The first part of the seminar will introduce the discipline itself, including its historical development, interdisciplinary ties, and the most powerful demographic tools. Students will participate in a workshop that introduces the challenges and opportunities that arise from collecting demographic data.