Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

We study the structure and dynamics of populations and explore issues of political relevance, such as 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.

News | September 30, 2026

New Horizon Europe Project LIFe Traces Inequalities Across Lives and Generations

How much do the circumstances of your birth shape where you end up as an adult? The project LIFe (Intergenerational Fairness: A Life-Course Approach) brings together research and policy-analysis institutions across Europe to examine how advantages and disadvantages build up over entire lifetimes and across generations. MPIDR’s Department of Digital and Computational Demography will take a leading role in modelling demographic and health developments. More

September

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September

Scientific Conference

BIOSFER 3.5 Meeting

The BIOSFER 3.5 Meeting demarcates the halfway point of the BIOSFER project. The conference will give members of the teams from NIPH, AU and MPIDR the opportunity to come together and showcase their ongoing works to each other as well as invited external guests. More

All Events

Anniversary

30 Years MPIDR in Rostock

Recommended Readings | September 14, 2026

Comparison of Microsimulated and Register-based Kinship Data

Introduction to our research groups

Demographic Data

Press Release | September 28, 2026

Tracking Researchers in Ukraine Through War and Armed Conflict

A study based on publication data traces how researchers moved within Ukraine and across borders between 2009 and 2022, with conflict-affected regions losing scholars while others became increasingly important destinations. These shifts were already underway after Russia illegally annexed Crimea and fighting began in the Donbas in 2014, underscoring that scholarly mobility during conflict cannot simply be understood as a matter of free choice. More

Selected Publications

Li, P.; Myrskylä, M.; Martikainen, P.:

Long-term environmental background radiation is associated with urinary tract cancer incidence: a population-based study from Finland Cancer Epidemiology 99:102912, 1–10. (2025)

Ebeling, M.; Mühlichen, M.; Talbäck, M.; Rau, R.; Goedel, A.; Klüsener, S.:

Disease incidence and not case fatality drives the rural disadvantage in myocardial-infarction-related mortality in Germany Preventive Medicine 179:107833, 1–8. (2024)

More Publications

Perspectives

Blog@MPIDR

Jobs & Fellowships

Questions and Answers

Being a Researcher at the MPIDR

Working at MPIDR

Life & Research in Rostock

New Issue 2/2026 available | June 30, 2026

The Quarterly German Newsletter

A peer-reviewed, open-access journal of population sciences

MPIDR

Online Databases

Doctoral Program

International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health and Data Science

New Publication | September 24, 2026

Student Migration to the UK set to Decline by 2030

British universities face a potential funding crisis by 2030, as the number of international undergraduate students—is expected to stagnate or decline. This is the conclusion of a new study by University College London (UCL), the University of Liverpool, and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR). More