Conferences / Scientific Workshops
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
2013
WIC Colloquium
(former VID Colloquium)
2021
Baby bust in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic? First results from the new STFF data series
21 April 2021
Tomáš Sobotka & Kryštof Zeman
Wittgenstein Centre (IIASA, OeAW, University of Vienna)
Abstract:
Past evidence on fertility responses to external shocks, including economic recessions and the out-breaks of infectious diseases, show that people of-ten put their childbearing plans on hold in uncertaintimes. We study the most recent data on monthly birth trends to analyse the initial fertility responses to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Ourresearch, based on new Short-Term Fertility Fluctu-ations (STFF) data series, embedded in the HumanFertility Database, shows the initial signs of the ex-pected “birth recession”. Monthly number of births in many countries have fallen sharply since October2020, often bringing about a clear reversal of theprevious trend. Across 17 countries with lower uc-tuations in births, births fell on average by 5.1% in November 2020, 6.5% in December 2020 and 8.9% in January 2021, compared with the same monthof the previous year. Spain sustained the sharpest drop in the number of births among the analysed countries, with the number of births plummeting by 20% in December 2020 and January 2021. Thecombined effect of rising mortality and falling birthrates is disrupting the balance of births and deaths in many countries, pushing natural population in-crease to record low levels.
About the presenters:
Tomáš Sobotkaleads the researchgroup Fertility and Family at theVienna Institute of Demography (OeAW). He also serves as an external lecturer at the Charles University in Prague and since 2021 as Editor of the Vienna Yearbook of Population Research. Kryštof Zeman is a research scientist with main focus on the Human Fertility Database project at the Department of Demography (Universityof Vienna). The presented work was created incollaboration with Aiva Jasilioniene, Ainhoa Alustiza Galarza, DmitriJdanov and László Németh from the Max Planck Institute for Demo-graphic Research (MPIDR).
Born Once, Die Once: Lifetable Relationships for Fertility
9 March 2021
Annette Baudisch & Jesús-Adrián Alvarez
Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics
Abstract:
Everyone dies, once. This basic truth empowers formal mortality research. Similarly, everyone is born, once. This truth has not been fully exploited to benefit formal fertility research. Baudisch and Stott (2019) recently advanced the idea of an offspring population - yet unborn - awaiting the event of birth, introducing a novel survivorship concept for birth.
Formalizing the idea of ’birth survival’, here we define the underlying random variable and derive the central ’triplet’ of survival analysis functions - the hazard, density, and survival. We derive a straightforward framework to capture age-specific patterns of birth, analogous to classical life table functions. Based on age-specific birth counts, we construct a ’birth table’ and meaningful summary measures such as ’birth expectancy’ and associated measures of spread.
We advance a new framework to compare birth schedules across populations and to reveal macrolevel patterns and constraints. Our approach enables method transfer from mortality to fertility research, which can create an integrated framework to study birth and death for the same focal individual. Thereby, insights into the intertwined relationships between birth and death become possible. This, we envision, will open an entirely unexplored line of research.
About the presenter:
Professor Annette Baudisch is Vice Director at the Danish Centre for Demo-graphic Research | CDem within the Interdisciplinary Centre on Population Dynamics | CPop. As mathematician and demographer by training, her research advances concepts, theories and methods to study age-patterns of mortality and fertility. Changing the question of “why we age” to “why we age, but other species do not”, and creating the pace-shape framework of aging are her award-winning contributions to science.
2020
2019
VID Colloquium
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014
VID Fertility and Family Discussion Group