The Nordic model has been seen as recipe for combining high fertility and high maternal labor supply. Central European countries have in contrast been characterized by more limited support to families and lower fertility. In the recent decades, this apparent contrast is unravelling. In Central Europe, there has been large expansions in supports to families, and fertility has increased. At the same time, fertility has plummeted in the Nordic countries, despite continued extensive family support. As a result, TFR in Germany and the Nordics has converged. In this talk, I discuss how change and stability in family policies relate to fertility change, using the Nordic countries and Germany as contrasting cases. I discuss whether the increases in fertility in Germany is likely to be a temporary “honeymoon effect” due to improved policies. I anchor reflections on efficient fertility policies for future in lessons from the contrasting cases.

Register data provide a reliable data source to conduct societally relevant research on minorities and hard-to-reach populations such as individuals with a disability. Current research, however, focuses mainly on single disabilities defined through the ICD-10 (International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems) classification, thereby lacking a comprehensive overview of populations with a disability. This study aims to extend this narrow and specific perspective on disability by conceptualising a framework to categorise three macro-types of physical, intellectual or sensory disabilities in linked individual-level register data. This novel approach will contribute to the literature by providing a methodological tool to comprehensively identify individuals with a disability from a young age. This study will use various register-based data sources from the Finnish population registers, i.e., medical care use, social security insurance utilisation and school curricula information, to first establish a new identification strategy for the three macro-types of physical, intellectual or sensory disabilities; second, assess identification similarities and divergences from the conventional ICD-10 classifications; and third, identify overlaps between these categories and other co-morbidities. The newly developed framework will enable population-based research on individuals with a disability, paving the way to providing insights into universal trends in this population across several life course domains. It will, therefore, make a substantial contribution to the field of disability studies and the broader disciplines of social epidemiology and demography.

Family ties are a fundamental dimension of individuals’ lives which might mitigate or exacerbate individual health disadvantage. In contrast to natives, who have a social and cultural advantage to navigate life-course adversities, immigrants need to make integrative efforts that are often entirely on their side, or on a limited family network. Family ties may mitigate these negative effects. Among the different types of family ties, a particular important role for health is played by spouses. Exogamous marriage, defined as marriage between people of different geographical origin, is often overlooked as a health determinant. Although the research on intermarriage is rich, not enough attention has been paid by scholars to the relationship between exogamous marriage and health of the spouses. Our aim is to fill this knowledge gap. We hypothesize that immigrants married to natives display better health outcomes compared to immigrants married to immigrant spouses; that the better health conditions are explained by the socioeconomic characteristics of the partner and that this relationship will hold after accounting for socioeconomic conditions prior to marriage. We use register-based longitudinal data on Finland to analyze the association between the place of birth of the spouse and inpatient and specialized outpatient care records. We focus on individuals aged 18-59 and their spouses (of any age), and we study men and women separately. Preliminary results for men show an increased risk of being hospitalized for psychopathological conditions for Finnish men married to immigrant women, which is fully explained by the sociodemographic controls included in the analyses, and a decreased risk for immigrant men married to immigrant women, that persists when considering the socio-demographic controls. Next steps include a detailed analysis by countries of birth, and a focus on the role of income.

Background: Social inequality is demonstrated in most health outcomes, yet the influence of socioeconomic status on reproductive health, such as timing of puberty, is debated. Early puberty is a risk indicator for adult diseases, emphasizing the need to determine potential causes of earlier puberty timing. The aim of this study was to investigate how parental socioeconomic position were associated with timing of puberty in girls and boys.

Methods: We studied 7890 girls and 7489 boys from a population-based Puberty Cohort nested within the Danish National Birth Cohort (DNBC). Highest completed educational level among parents was used as the indicator of socioeconomic status. Information on pubertal development was obtained every six months throughout puberty. We estimated mean monthly differences for the average age at attaining multiple pubertal milestones using multivariable interval-censored regression model.

Pre-liminary results: When analyzing all pubertal milestones simultaneously, the pubertal milestones were on average attained earlier in girls of low-grade professional parents (-0.7 months [95% confidence interval (CI): −1.6; 0.2]), skilled parents (-1,4 (95% CI: −2.3; −0.4) and unskilled parents (-2,7 (95% CI: −3.8; −1.6) compared with girls of high-grade professional parents. Boys of unskilled parents attained the pubertal milestones earlier (-1,2 (95% CI: −2.3; −0.1) compared to boys of high-skilled professionals, but no clear association was observed for boys of low-grade professional or skilled parents.

Conclusion: The results of our analysis indicate that lower parental socioeconomic status is associated with earlier timing of puberty in both girls and boys.

Menarche (the first occurrence of menstruation) is an event with critical importance in women’s fertility and fecundity. Growing evidence suggests a shift in the social gradient in age at menarche (AAM): While advantaged children used to experience menarche relatively early, this pattern now appears to have reversed in some Western societies. This observation raises an intriguing possibility that AAM could be one axis by which social inequalities reproduce, as early menarche may increase the risks of certain diseases and reduce opportunities for attaining higher education. As yet, it is unclear whether the social gradient in AAM has indeed changed in recent cohorts, and if so, whether socioeconomic differences actually underlie the change in AAM across generations.

The present study uses a unique compilation of cohort data linked to Norwegian register data and censuses: 85,000 female respondents from the Cohort of Norway, and 100,000 mothers and their daughters from the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Cohort Study. We document a secular trend of declining AAM throughout the 20th century, but unlike previous studies from the US and UK, we do not find a positive social gradient in AAM by income for earlier cohorts. In recent birth cohorts born 2002-2007, AAM further declined and the social gradient therein increased. Using first differencing regressions, we find stronger decline in AAM in daughters compared to their mothers if the mother grew up in household with lower socioeconomic position (0.19 years difference between the top and bottom percentile; CI 0.07-0.30), and also if the daughter's socioeconomic position is worsened compared to that of the mother during her own childhood (0.15 years if the position drops from the top to the bottom percentile; CI 0.06-0.26). These findings will be expanded by incorporating information on parental education, and additional cohort data for recent birth cohorts.

A precise estimate of the target population is inherently important in population statistics. However, factors such as increased immigration, and few incentives for deregistration after emigration mean that population registers may not always accurately reflect the target population. This study aims to identify unregistered emigration using “signs of life”. That is, detecting historical inactivity of individuals who have emigrated, but are still listed as residents in the population register. Unregistered emigration contributes to over-coverage, as the number of actual emigrations exceeds the number of registered emigrants. This estimation error affects not only size and composition of the population, but also impacts demographic indicators, such as death and fertility rates. Statistics on households and families may also become skewed due to these discrepancies. There is still no consensus on how to identify or deal with unregistered emigration. Addressing this, we first provide a comparison of methods adapted from the literature for estimating the number of unregistered emigrations. The Zero-Income Approach provides a method with minimal computational and data quality requirements, which serves as a foundation for the estimation. The Household-Income Approach builds upon this by correcting for household income factors. Finally, the Register Trace Approach provides the most comprehensive and detailed picture of unregistered emigration. Our estimates suggest that unregistered emigrants account for approximately 0.44 percent of the adult population in Norway. Second, we analyse the demographic characteristics of the non-deregistration group. We find that the problem of unregistered emigration is not equally distributed across the population, indicating that some subgroups are more prone to discrepancies than the rest of the population. Among immigrants, the over-coverage due to unregistered emigration is substantially higher, accounting for 2.29 percent of the population.

The German cause-of-death statistics are often used to draw conclusions about the health status of the population and the significance of certain diseases. Unfortunately, cause-of-death statistics - not only in Germany - often show a relatively high proportion of ill-defined deaths. Ill-defined deaths have an invalid or unspecific ICD code as underlying cause of death. This may be the case when the indicated ICD code is intermediate (e.g. heart failure) or non-specific (e.g. unspecified cancer). These ICD codes are not informative for public health planning and for example in the context of burden of disease calculations. They do not adequately reflect the underlying cause of death.

The Global Burden of Disease Study (GBD) of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) has a specific list of ICD codes that shall be considered invalid resulting in an ill-defined death. In 2015 the proportion of invalid codes in Germany was 26,6%, in 2017 it was 26.0%.; with quite substantial regional variation (Wengler et al. 2019). Following the GBD classification we want to up-date this analysis, looking at the time from 2012 to 2021 and the share of ill-defined deaths in the German federal states.

In general, a further decrease in the share of ill-defined deaths is expected. Especially since more federal states use automatic (re-)coding offered in the Iris/MUSE-system, which incorporates the WHO rules for coding of causes of death. Having less ill-defined deaths and hence better quality of causes of death data is of high importance for public health planning and efficient measurements.

Background: In Germany, the majority of long-lived individuals (LLI) aged 85+ suffer from dementia at the time of their death. Additional medical costs of people with dementia (PwD) are mainly caused by differences in hospital care. The aim of this study is how the risk of hospitalization of LLI changes with age and age at death .

Methods: We drew a random sample of quarterly data from all AOK insured persons aged 50+ (N=250,000) in 2004 with follow-up to 2019 and followed the 1918 to 1923 birth cohort (n=4,067 males and 13,303 females), who reached age 85 years between 2004 and 2009, to the end of the study period or to death. We estimated a multivariate logistic regression model, clustering variances by person ID, to examine the simultaneous effects of age, age at death and last year of life on the risk of hospitalization, stratified by PwD and non-PwD.

Results: Overall, 41.23% of men and 48.37% of women had received a dementia diagnosis, and more than half had been hospitalized (men: 56.41%, women 57.19%). PwD were more likely to be in hospital (men: 68%, women: 68%) than non-PwD (men: 46%, women: 53%). In the multivariate analysis (Table 1), the risk of hospitalization increased significantly with each year of age, by 7.6% for PwD and by 9.3% for non-PwD. With increasing age at death, the risk decreased significantly by 11% for both. These trends levelled off at the highest ages. In the last year of life, the risk of hospitalization increased more for non-PwD (OR=7.36) than for PwD (OR=4.79); women had a significantly lower risk.

Conclusion: LLI have lower hospitalization risks the later they die, both in people with and without dementia.

Governments are grappling with demographic shifts, such as an aging population and rising old-age dependency, prompting discussions on delaying retirement age. To safeguard vulnerable groups from prolonged unemployment, policies promoting longer careers need careful planning. Existing research has centred on predicting work-life expectancy, serving as a foundation for policy development. This study extends this work, adopting a life course perspective, by recognizing that retirement is a gradual process characterized by complex and multiple transitions. Using comprehensive data from the German Pension Insurance, we employ advanced machine learning techniques like sequence-to-sequence Transformers and LSTM models, along with sequence analysis, to predict and analyse work-life trajectories from ages 50 to 65. These analyses provide valuable insights for understanding complex retirement transitions and show accurate predictions at the aggregate level.

Inconsistent findings on mental health changes surrounding family transitions suggest subgroups drive effects. We examine if genetic susceptibility to depression explains this heterogeneity.

Using Finish data and random-effect models, we followed 30,192 individuals’ antidepressant (AD) purchase probabilities during union formation, separation, first childbirth, and widowhood. A polygenic index (PGI) for depression categorized individuals into low, medium and high risk.

Post-union formation, low-PGI individuals had decreasing AD purchase probabilities, while high-risk individuals exhibited increases. High-risk individuals showed a pre-separation increase in AD purchase probabilities, followed by an adjustment to previous levels. Post-widowhood, AD-probability increased among high-risk individuals, while low-risk individuals recovered fastest to pre-widowhood levels. PGI-differences surrounding first childbirth were not significant.

Overall, mental health trajectories surrounding union formation, separation and widowhood differ by depression PGI. High-PGI individuals had worse mental health during these events, while union formation was particularly beneficial for low-PGI individuals, who recovered fastest from separation and widowhood.

We explore what drives the differences in population growth among the municipalities in Denmark and Sweden and to what extent existing differences in age compositions across the municipalities are responsible for these differences.

Using Danish and Swedish aggregated municipal data, we decompose population growth of the municipalities into three demographic components, birth, death, and migration, and include a component that measures the effect of age composition on individual municipalities in relation to population growth.

We find that population growth and age structure are heavily linked to one another and largely determine migration patterns. More specifically, relatively older municipalities with negative contributions to growth from age structure also have a negative contribution from migration. On the other hand, younger municipalities with positive contributions of age structure component also tend to have a positive contribution from migration. Thus, rapidly ageing municipalities experience a double burden of both existing old-age structure and outmigration.

We investigate whether the prevalence of higher-risk pregnancies explains the trends and differences in stillbirth rates observed in European countries. We use data on stillbirths and live births, including maternal age and multiple pregnancies, from 2010 to 2021 in countries which are part of the Euro-Peristat project. Poisson regression was used to model trends. Kitagawa decomposition was used to decompose the stillbirth rate differences into structural and mortality effects.

Trends and levels of stillbirths vary between countries. Overall, maternal age is increasing, with fewer mothers aged under 25 and more aged 35 and older. There is also variation between countries in the prevalence of multiple births. Maternal age explains part of the within-country difference as well as the between-country difference. Due to low prevalence overall, multiple pregnancies fail to explain those differences. However, the majority of both differences in stillbirth rates are due to variations in fetal mortality.

One of the most distinct demographic trends in Western societies during the last 50 years is the increase in the proportion of one-person households (OPH). Nordic countries have been identified as frontrunners in this development. In Asia, equally developed countries like Japan retain elements of a strong-family system and an asymmetrical gender regime, simultaneously as they are experiencing rapid increases in OPHs. This article aims to uncover how the demographic and socioeconomic composition of OPHs have developed since the 1990s among working-age women in Sweden and Japan. In contrast to Japan, the level of OPHs remained stable over time in Sweden, and even declined among women with high incomes. This suggests that the negative association between family formation and women’s economic activity is temporary and only prevails as long as society has not adapted to the convergence of men’s and women’s socioeconomic roles.

Same-sex couples increasingly often live in legally recognized unions and have children together. The accessibility of parenthood, however, depends on intersecting contextual and couple-level characteristics. Using Finnish register data on 1,945 female same-sex couples who registered their partnership in 2002–2016, during which important legal changes regarding same-sex parenthood took place, we explore how education and the existence of prior children predict childbearing within the same-sex partnership. Female couples’ likelihood of childbearing within five years of registering a partnership increased from 20% to 45% over the observation period. The increase was not universal. For couples educated to tertiary level, the increase was from 24% to 55%. For primary and lower-secondary levels, the likelihood decreased from 27% to 9%. Educational differences in childbearing were only marginally explained by income level. Intensifying educational differences in fertility may reflect changes in couple-level characteristics as well as institutional barriers to childbearing that need more attention.

Objectives: The present study investigates whether the relationship between widowhood and healthcare use differs between native- and foreign-born persons residing in Denmark. It also studies the variations of health effects of widowhood by the immigration backgrounds of spousal.

Methods: Leveraging Danish population register data from 1995-2014, we investigate trajectories of doctor’s visits 3 years before and 3 years after widowhood and the risk of post-widowhood hospitalization among immigrants and native-born Danes aged 50 and older.

Results: We found that immigrant women had a smaller increase in doctor’s visits before and after widowhood than Danish women. Immigrant men had a smaller increase in doctor’s visits before widowhood, while the post-widowhood change in doctor’s visits was similar among immigrant and native men. The change in the number of doctor’s visits varied across marriage type among immigrants. Discussion: The results suggest that aging immigrants are more vulnerable to stress related to spousal loss.

This paper aims to examine the extend of loneliness of the Afro-diasporic community in Germany. We focus on Afro-diasporic migrants aged 18-50 (N=213) and compare them with native Germans (N=14,269) from the German Family Demography Panel Study (FReDA 2021). First, we present findings on the prevalence of emotional loneliness (Afro-diaspora: 21.1 %, natives: 13.1 %) and cognitive loneliness (Afro-diaspora: 19.4 %, natives: 13.4 %). Especially social rejection is reported more frequently by Afro-diasporic migrants (21.30 %, natives: 16.32 %). In a second step, we estimate the outcome variables (emotional and cognitive loneliness) of cross-sectional regressions. The models focus on compositional differences between migrants and natives (e.g. education) as well as on cultural factors influencing loneliness (e.g. religion). Preliminary results indicate that loneliness is significantly higher in the Afrodiasporic community compared to the native German population.Intersectional risks such as low socioeconomic status or being female increase the likelihood of higher loneliness.

The demographic transition is putting the German statutory pension insurance system under enormous pressure to reform. A factorial survey experiment conducted as part of the German Economic Institute’s 2023 IW Survey of Individuals related the level of pension contributions to the degree of security and the standard retirement age and simulated the adjustments reforms could achieve. However, even this explicit illustration of reform options failed to counteract popular aversion to changes. Hence, the status quo receives the greatest approval. In direct comparison, postponing the standard retirement age by one year is as unacceptable as a 3-percentage-point increase in the contribution rate or a reduction in pension benefits of about 4 per cent. The lowest acceptance of reforms is to be found among those whom they would least affect: the over-50s. Among under-50s, the rejection of all reform options is considerably weaker.

The P-score is a common measure of excess mortality, indicating the percentage by which actual measured deaths deviate from expected deaths, that result from a counterfactual scenario. It is often used to compare pandemic mortality burdens between countries, but such comparisons can be biased due to differences in population age structures. Here, we show that the P-score depends on the expected distribution of deaths over age in a population, and propose a Kitagawa-type decomposition that decomposes P-score differences into an excess mortality difference and an age distribution of death difference. As an example, we calculated P-scores for women in European countries for the year 2020, with expected deaths assuming pre-pandemic conditions. Applying Kitagawa's decomposition, it can be shown that differences in the age structure of expected deaths have only a small influence on the comparison of P-scores between European countries.

Smoking significantly impacts mortality, with both low and high levels of consumption having detrimental effects. The duration of smoking, in addition to the intensity of consumption, plays an important role in determining the extent of these effects.
We analyzed data from the National Health Interview Survey between 1997 and 2014. By using Cox proportional hazards models to control for factors such as socioeconomic status, pre-existing conditions, and individual lifestyle factors, we were able to observe both gender-specific and health-related effects.
Our analysis showed that all smokers, regardless of their health status, have a higher relative mortality risk compared with non-smokers. The longer the period of heavy smoking, the higher the relative risk of death compared with non-smokers, especially for smokers under 70 years.
Male smokers have a higher relative mortality risk than female smokers, while tobacco consumption has a significantly more negative effect on female smokers than on non-smokers.

Globally WHO has reported 774 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 infections and 7 million deaths with uneven distribution of disease burden between the WHO Regions. As for December 2023, the Nordic countries reported 9.4 million cases (34/100 inhabitants), which is less than in Germany (38.4 million, 46/100). According to WHO, there were 51 500 COVID-19 deaths in the Nordic countries (188/100 000) and 175 000 (210/100 000) in Germany in 2020-2023. The Nordic average, however, hides a five-fold difference between Iceland (51/100 000) and Sweden (249/100 000).

Measuring COVID-19 mortality is difficult, since countries have had different practices how to gather information on deaths related to COVID-19. Originally WHO recommended countries to report all deaths within 30 days of confirmed infections (deaths with COVID-19). Increasingly, countries report deaths directly or indirectly caused by COVID-19. International statistics is a mixture of these measurements, which hampers their comparability.

This contribution offers an overview of the determinants of international migration – at the micro, meso and macro levels. Focusing on some of the drivers we place emphasis on the personal- and family-level processes that inform the migration decisions. The most common profile of people who intend to migrate is that of the young male (not exclusively!), more educated and with consolidated networks abroad. Regardless of the income level, the older individuals are, the less likely they are to express the desire to migrate.

In contemporary societies of both the Global North and South where a growing but still small proportion of the population is longing to be elsewhere, this propensity to migrate becomes an important driver of social change and development as a key aspect of the process of migration decision-making. Although the migration aspirations have often been labelled as poor determinants of migration, without them and the desires for change the other drivers would not lead to migration. These latter drivers are inherent in international disparities regarding demographic, social and economic structures and dynamics.

In parallel, the multiplicity of motivations and the complexity of contemporary migration dynamics have highlighted the limited explanatory capabilities of categorisations such as: forced, economic, seasonal, environmental,…migrant.

In this context there is an urgent need to reformulate the study of the drivers of international migration by going beyond the primacy of economic rationality and the sole logic of the push-pull models of international migration.

Drawing on the results of the EU-Horizon2020 FUME project, the contribution proposes an understanding of the patterns and drivers of international migration developed within the analytical framework of the aspiration/ability model. The key question of the project was: what contribution can the discussion on the drivers of international migration make to the formulation of narratives of future migration scenarios?

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 triggered the largest and most dynamic refugee situation in Europe in decades. The EU reacted quickly and in an overall compassionate spirit to the emerging crisis. By activating the Temporary Protection Directive, it provided refugees from Ukraine with quick access to temporary residence permits and basic rights as regards welfare, health care, work and education.

As scholars have observed, the EU’s response to people fleeing from Ukraine has been significantly different from how it has behaved towards other refugee situations in the recent past and until today. The arrival of asylum seekers has for many years raised concerns, and policymaking has been characterized by attempts to control and limit their number. This is especially true since what is widely known as the refugee ‘crisis’ of 2015, which first prompted welcoming attitudes across several EU countries and then an upsurge of new deterrence strategies and political controversy.

This paper seeks to explore and explain the main differences between the EU’s management of the Ukrainian refugee emergency and other major refugee arrivals in the recent past. It then considers possible lessons that the handling of the Ukrainian refugee situation might hold for EU migration and asylum policies at large. The analysis shows that the Temporary Protection Directive is a useful tool in emergencies; that the EU visa regime plays a major role for facilitating – or obstructing – safe and legal access to EU territory; that secondary movements of people seeking protection can be a good thing rather than a problem; and that flexible models of responsibility-sharing between the EU Member States can work better than static models of solidarity.

The Russian war in Ukraine which has escalated in February 2022 to the whole territory of Ukraine has brought an unprecedented flow of Ukrainian refugees to Poland. According to UNCHR there are more than 6.3 million Ukrainian refugees in the world. Since the re-escalation of Russian war in Ukraine there has been recorded 16 million border crossings through Ukrainian-Polish border by November 2023 and till then nearly 1.6 applied for various asylum and protection status. Before the war there was already more than 1 million labour migrants from Ukraine in Poland. It means that in the short time the inflow of Ukrainian migrants to Poland was massive, as never experienced before. It shows also that Ukrainian refugees have had plenty of migrant networks in Poland which facilitated their arrivals. The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly we are going to assess skills, explore resilience and learn about perceived social support by Ukrainian migrants and refugees in Poland as indicators for their labour market integration and a development of human resources, also needed after a return to Ukraine. Secondly, our aim is also methodological. The data is collected via a unique interactive portal My Migration (www.mymigration.academy) which is available in Ukrainian, English and Polish and gives an instant feedback to respondents. It uses world validated scales relevant for each topic. In social sciences we usually take information from our respondents, giving very little in return. By developing this portal both technologically and methodologically we wanted to change it and reciprocate our respondents who are in need of knowledge about their resources. Therefore My Migration portal opens avenues for research impact via making this instrument also used by practitioners, e.g. job advisors, NGO experts etc.

Our study investigates family dynamics among forced migrants from Eritrea and Syria to Germany. We analyse the partnership and childbearing patterns of women and men. We pursue the following research questions: 1) What are the union formation and fertility behaviours of refugees in the years before and after migration and during transit stays? 2) How are family events and forced migration trajectories interrelated? 3) Which demographic, socio-economic and migration-related factors are associated with diverse family dynamics of refugees? Our empirical analyses draw on data derived from the quantitative survey "Forced Migration and Transnational Family Arrangements - Eritrean and Syrian Refugees in Germany" (TransFAR) collected in 2020. This survey covers 1,450 respondents and is Germany-wide representative of recent refugees from two major countries of origin of forced migration to Germany. Our analytical strategy is threefold: First, we describe the patterns and prevalence of marriage and childbearing, taking a multisited perspective and accounting for several locations of the respondent: in the country of origin, in transit countries and in Germany at time of arrival as well as at time of the survey. Second, sequence analysis techniques are performed, accounting for marriage and fertility trajectories from 5 years before arrival to Germany to 5 years after arrival. Third, the associations between marriage-fertility trajectories and individual demographic, socio-economic and migration-specific factors as well as contextual characteristics are estimated. Preliminary results show that an important share of married individuals experiences a birth in the first years upon arrival in Germany, indicating that the partnership status at arrival is crucial for fertility outcomes at destination. Furthermore, we find considerable differences between genders.

Fertility rates have been below the sustainability level of 2.1 children per woman in most high-income countries for decades. Meanwhile, the use of artificial reproductive techniques (ART) has increased for conceiving a child. In this study, we combine nationwide information on abortions, ART and immigration to illustrate the difference in pregnancy rates and fertility rates.

We used Danish registry data on ART treatments, induced abortions and country of origin to estimate pregnancy rates and compare them to fertility rates. To include birth cohorts with not completed fertility, ART and abortion rates, these were forecasted.

Our results clearly show that pregnancy rates have declined more rapidly than fertility rates and that immigration has significantly contributed to the fertility rates seen in Denmark. The forecasted fertility and pregnancy rates suggest this pattern will continue.

We infer from our results that pregnancy rates may be more informative in understanding the fertility crisis on Earth and that biological factors could significantly contribute to the findings.

Fertility trends underwent strong fluctuations during the COVID-19 pandemic. Upward and downward fertility shifts, although of varying size, occurred quite synchronously in many higher-income countries. This study focuses on the sharp downturn in monthly birth rates at the turn of the years 2021-2022, which has been rather puzzling given the relatively stable and positive fertility dynamics seen during most of 2021 in many countries. This decline in births is linked with conceptions in spring-summer 2021, when the COVID-19 vaccination effort was gathering momentum. The central aim of this study is to explore whether the rollout of COVID-19 vaccination and the fall in monthly fertility are associated. Using an interrupted time series design, the impact of two interventions – the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 and the start of COVID-19 vaccination– on the trends in seasonally- and calendar-adjusted monthly TFRs has been evaluated. The findings suggest that at least in some countries, the COVID-19 vaccination seemingly influenced childbearing behaviour and thus contributed to the decline in birth rates observed about nine months following the start of the effort. More in-depth and context-sensitive research is needed to further explore causal mechanisms underlying changes in childbearing decisions in response to the COVID-19 vaccination.

This study investigates the differential impact of men's or women’s job loss on fertility across different couple types: income-egalitarian vs. male-breadwinner vs. female-breadwinner and high-income vs. medium-income vs. low-income couples. We applied event history analysis with linear probability models to the Norwegian population and employment Registers for the period 2005-2017. Prior studies on the unemployment-fertility relationship did not use exogenous employment shocks and partner characteristics. We used the exogenous shock for job loss, i.e. plant (workplace) closures, to infer a causal effect of men's or women’s job loss on fertility within couples. Our results show that plant closure slightly negatively affects the probability of first birth within three years of plant closure for both males and females. However, we do not observe any significant gender differences in the probability of first birth. We also do not observe variations in the effects of plant closure across different couple types, including income-egalitarian, male-breadwinner, and female-breadwinner couples, as well as high-, medium-, and low-income couples. These results differ from studies in the UK and Germany conducted by Di Nallo & Lipps, 2023. We argue that the Nordic countries' favourable employment conditions, gender-egalitarian attitudes, and robust welfare state provisions may explain the absence of fertility response and gender differences in fertility response to plant closures. In general, experiencing plant closure does not decrease the probability of first birth in any subgroup of couples. However, a couple is less likely to have first birth if they are not a high-income or income-egalitarian couple.

This study compares the effect of civil service and private sector employment on the transition rate to the first child, considering possible effect heterogeneity of sex, contract status, partner's working status, and residence in West or East Germany.

The civil service is often associated with a family friendly work environment offering the possibility to reverse the problem of low birth rate. An influence has been demonstrated in other European countries, but Germany lacks an individual-level analysis that takes into account possible heterogeneities.

Using data from the German Family Panel (Pairfam) of 5985 employees who experienced 677 first birth events, we run discrete event history models in a piecewise-constant specification to calculate the transition to first child conditional on civil service or private sector employment.

We do not find a substantial and significant effect on fertility behaviour for either women or men. Moreover, there is no evidence of effect heterogeneity by contract status, partner’s employment, or region.

The findings indicate that the current civil service does not have the assumed potential to positively influence family formation and address the problem of low fertility in the German welfare state.

This paper extends the Lee-Carter model to include vanishing jumps on mortality rates, where
the impact is highest in the beginning and then gradually diminishes. Existing models either account
for transitory jumps over one period or permanent shifts. However, there is no literature on estimat-
ing mortality time series with jumps that have a vanishing effect over a small number of periods,
as is typically observed in pandemics. Using COVID-19 data, our proposed Bayesian model out-
performs transitory shock models in terms of in-sample fit, thus providing a more comprehensive
representation of mortality rates during a pandemic.

The Nordic countries have experienced rapid and unexpected fertility declines in the last decade. Future paths of fertility are a key input when charting the sustainability of social security systems. Hence realistic views of possible future paths of fertility, including the uncertainty regarding these paths, is critically important for economic and social planning in the Nordic countries.
An almost universal finding of probabilistic forecasting is that model-based prediction intervals are too narrow. The result is a misleadingly confident view of the future. We approach the problem of prediction uncertainty by generating empirical prediction intervals for our forecasts of Nordic period fertility up to 2050.
We derive the empirical prediction intervals for our forecasts from an out-of-sample cross-validation, utilizing historic forecasting errors. These quantify how uncertain we should be about the forecasts given the demonstrated forecast performance of the past. We then validate the calibration of the empirical prediction intervals and compare them to the performance of model-based prediction intervals. We use the following forecast models applied to data from the Human Fertility Database: First, a na"{i}ve approach fixing the last observed Total Fertility Rate (TFR). Second, a GARCH model of the TFR. Third, the Lee-Carter method for age-specific fertility rates. And fourth, a probabilistic, random-walk based forecast around the assumption that the ongoing fertility postponement would gradually slow down and come to an end by 2050.
In addition to presenting forecasts of Nordic fertility up to 2050, we expect to find that the empirical prediction intervals provide a more realistic view of the forecast uncertainty, exhibiting wider prediction intervals in comparison to the model-based prediction intervals.

After preliminary attempts at the end of the 20th century to compute probabilistic population forecasts (by Cohen, Keyfitz, Lee & Tuljapurkar, Alho, and others), the field became fully developed in the past two decades. I give a brief overview of the various applications of probabilistic demographic forecasts, spanning from national, subnational, and multi-country populations to the labour market, households, immigrants, and long-term care. I sketch the development from a frequentist to a Bayesian approach. Finally, I evaluate ex-post facto the predictive quality of selected population and household forecasts for Norway, the Netherlands, and France.

Population projections for small geographical areas are challenging even when data availability is good. Despite the presence of register data in Norway the current municipality level population projections by Statistics Norway are not satisfactory and are in the process of being replaced from a cohort-component framework to microsimulation. We propose a simpler and generalizable approach for downscaling national level population projections into municipality level projections, leveraging Norwegian register data and other data sources using an innovative neural network-based machine learning model. An additional advantage of this downscaling approach is that additional dimensions can easily be added to sub-national projections. We show this by disaggregating the Wittgenstein Centre population projections. The machine learning model is also trained by categorizing municipalities by special economic activities that might affect the population structure in that area. Such activities are the presence of fish farming, oil production, universities, or a high concentration of agricultural production.