The 2025 volume of the Vienna Yearbook of Population Research focuses on the role of population inequality in demographic research, particularly, on the interplay between population diversity and social inequality. Besides classical markers of heterogeneity in individual behavior, such as gender, age, education, family status, migration background, urban-rural residence and socio-economic status, other sources of inequality are covered in the volume. They include marginalized populations, such as homeless people, generational and spatial factors as well as emerging trends, such as digitalization. Understanding population inequality is key for modeling population developments and projecting them into the future. Equally important is to understand how and why different types of inequality arise and evolve, and what policy challenges they impose for socio-economic development, welfare systems and social cohesion. 

Population inequality matters

Vienna Yearbook of Population Research 2025, Vol. 23

Vienna Yearbook of Population Research 2025, Vol. 23 2025 23 2025 

Authors for this volume | Introduction | A demographic perspective on human wellbeing: Concepts, measurement and population heterogeneity | Debate | EU and UK targets for healthy life expectancy – are they achievable? | Demography and well-being | Sustainable human wellbeing: What can demography contribute? | WELLBYs, cost-benefit analyses and the Easterlin Discount | Review Articles | Comparing global reports of subjective well-being to experiential measures | Anthropometric history and the measurement of wellbeing | Research Articles | Going beyond GDP with a parsimonious indicator: inequality-adjusted healthy lifetime income | Global improvements in Years of Good Life since 1950 | Mortality evolution in Algeria: What can we learn about data quality?  | Gender disparities in health at older ages and their consequences for well-being in Latin America and the Caribbean | Gender and socioeconomic inequalities in health and wellbeing across age in France and Switzerland | Understanding women’s well-being in Turkey  | The age U-shape in Europe: the protective role of partnership  | Singles in the city: happily ever after? | Fathers’ and mothers’ enjoyment of childcare: the role of multitasking | Well-being in Europe: decompositions by country and gender for the population aged 50+ | The life course and subjective well-being across generations – an analysis based on cross-national surveys (2002–2016) | Academic track mismatch and the temporal development of well-being and competences in German secondary education | Is educational wellbeing associated with grade repetition and school dropout rates among Indian students? Evidence from a panel study | Data &amp; Trends | Years of Good Life: An illustration of a new well-being indicator using data for Thailand

The 2021 special issue explores demographic perspectives on human wellbeing across time and space. While the idea of relating demographic parameters to wellbeing has been around for a while, a more concrete research agenda on the topic has gained momentum only recently. This volume gives an overview on the latest developments and shows how existing theoretical concepts and methodological tools in demography offer substantial advancements for the study of wellbeing. A large part of the volume is devoted to the challenges of defining and measuring wellbeing, with the most important debate being on whether the focus should be on objective measures like income or subjective definitions of wellbeing such as happiness. The various authors define wellbeing as health and mortality, as income, education or other resources, as happiness or life satisfaction, or a combination thereof, by introducing novel composite indicators. The volume covers wellbeing in historical and contemporary populations, in high- and low-income countries all around the world, also pointing at important research hindrances due to the lack of good-quality data in many regions. Most empirical contributions consider population heterogeneity to study how wellbeing differs by population subgroups and whether some demographic and socioeconomic groups fall behind, thereby providing important policy implications.   

Demographic aspects of human wellbeing

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Vanessa Di Lego

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Vienna Yearbook of Population Research 2025, Vol. 23

Vienna Yearbook of Population Research 2021, Vol. 19