The conference will be held March 16-18, 2022, as a virtual event via the Zoom video conferencing platform. Focus topic: "Demographic Change in Central and Eastern Europe - Demographic Behaviour since 1990".
The fall of the Berlin Wall was followed by thorough and rapid changes that affected all layers of society. Welfare state policies were fundamentally reformed and labour markets deeply restructured, leading to rapidly growing economic opportunities but also uncertainties among the population. Alongside this development, demographic behaviour has changed profoundly in the aftermath of the collapse of the formerly socialist societies. Women’s age at first birth increased, and period fertility dropped. Also affected was the marriage, divorce and non-marital childbearing behaviour, albeit to very varying degrees in the different countries. Moreover, mortality as well as migration patterns were deeply influenced by the regime change. A pressing research question at that time was under which conditions the family-related behaviour of the formerly socialist countries would start following “Western” patterns. Did these demographic behaviours between East and West eventually converge? Did value changes matter for family transformations? Which role did the restructuring of the welfare states play? What were the effects of labour market developments on demographic change? Which distinct demographic features have remained until today in Central and Eastern European countries?
With this conference, they are compensating for the DGD Annual Conference that was cancelled in 2020 due to the Corona pandemic, which was held under the same theme. Due to its international character, the conference will be held mainly in English, but presentations in German are also possible.
Annual Conference 2022 of the German Society for Demography (DGD) in collaboration with the Estonian Demographic Association, the Hungarian Demographic Research Institute, the Czech Society for Demography and the Committee on Demographic Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences.