News from the Network

Out now: the quarterly newsletter of Population Europe, the network of Europe’s leading demographic research centres. Please download it here: Population Europe Newsletter Winter 15/16.pdf

Professor Paul Boyle, Chief Executive Economic and Social Research Council and President and Vice Chancellor, University of Leicester has been appointed a CBE in the Queen's New Year’s Honours for services to Social Science. The Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) is awarded for having a role at national level, or a leading role at regional level, and for a distinguished, innovative contribution to any area.

The world currently has more refugees and internally displaced persons than it has had since World War II. Yet the readiness of many wealthy countries to provide asylum to these refugees is waning, and a major reason for this is the fiscal burden that would result from larger refugee intakes.

During the second half of the 20th century there was a positive relationship between single parenthood and the mother’s educational level in Spain and Italy. However, several important transformations contemplated by Goode (1993) and McLanahan (2004) suggest that this relationship may have been inverted in Spain but perhaps not in Italy. The purpose of a new study by researchers Anna Garriga, Sebastià Sarasa and Paolo Berta is to test this hypothesis.  

Forced migration caused by armed conflict or persecution is unpredictable [1]. The Syrian crisis, which by October 2015 saw over four million refugees already registered outside Syria, certainly seemed to catch Europe off guard.

Population Europe is very pleased to announce its new collaboration with the OECD Directorate for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs (ELS) in Paris, France. ELS is joining a group of nine other institutions, amongst them the European Commission DG for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion, Eurostat, and the Population Reference Bureau in Washington D.C.

The European Commission’s new roadmap on work-life balance for families seeks to im­prove labour market participation of women. Women’s employment, asserts the Commis­sion, is “tightly linked to the distribution of work and family responsibilities between men and women” and, consequently, gender gaps in pay and pensions [1].

Greek life expectancy is on the rise. Between 2004 and 2013, life expectancy at birth rose more than two full years from 79.3 to 81.4, keeping Greece above the EU average (up 2.2 years to 80.6) and on par with some richer countries like Germany (up 1.6 years to 80.9). Within the country, the change has not been driven by rich regions only: Epirus (Ipeiros), the country’s poorest by GDP per capita (2011), saw a rise in life expectancy similar to that of Athens (Attiki).

Why do women remain childless, why is 60 the new 70, what factors influence migration decisions? In our Population Europe Video Series "Population Europe Inter-Faces", 20 well-respected researchers from the Population Europe network answer demographic questions in a very intelligible and comprehensive way. Each one of them is also explaining one figure, that they find interesting an important. You can watch the videos here