The VID is a research institute of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and Austria’s largest research institution specialising in demography and population studies. It is part of the ÖAW’s new Campus Akademie in the heart of Vienna. Our research addresses population dynamics, population structures and their drivers, with a focus on fertility and family, health and longevity, migration, and population economics. These topics reflect fundamental aspects of human life and hold high relevance for policy, guiding our efforts to better understand the demographic processes that shape modern societies.
The VID is committed to advancing the field of demography through innovative research and by expanding the classical demographic framework—centred on age and sex—by adding education as a third core analytical dimension to provide a more comprehensive understanding of population change. This approach, pursued under the label of the “Vienna School of Demography”, builds on foundational contributions by the VID’s former director Wolfgang Lutz. Together with our strong expertise in comparative European demography and the demography of Austria, the VID’s research groups conduct cutting-edge work in the two core focus areas “Demography and Human Capital” and “Demography of Europe”.
