In this contribution two recent studies on the inequality of trends in cognitive skills are discussed. One uses longitudinal data on tested adult literacy and numeracy in Germany and finds that for the more educated and those in intellectually demanding jobs, skills continue to improve up to higher working ages, while for those with low starting levels and blue-collar jobs, skills start to decline already in the thirties. Another study estimates global level trends in skills in literacy adjusted mean years of schooling and finds a growing gap in skills between countries, despite some convergence in formal educational attainment levels. This article discusses selected possible consequences of this growing inequality in skills within and between countries, and outlines a further research agenda.

Keywords: education, Inequalities, Cognitive skills, Adult literacy, Adult numeracy

Widowhood presents significant challenges in India. These challenges will intensify in the next two decades. Both the widow and widower populations will increase, with the proportion of widowed women being continuously greater than that of men. We argue that the current disadvantages faced by widows are poised to grow. Evidence from the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India Wave 1 (2017–18) highlights the specific nature of these disadvantages: among Indian adults aged 45 and older, a higher percentage of widows than of widowers do not work, lack financial support, suffer from multimorbidity and functional disabilities and rely on family caregiving. We anticipate that, absent social and policy reforms, widows in India will face increased poverty and ill health due to inadequate safety nets, limited caregiving options and insufficient incomes. In addition to robust national and state initiatives, further research is essential to address the challenges we posit will confront the growing population of widows in India.

Keywords: Widowhood, Disadvantage, India, ageing, Socioeconomic status, Health

The distribution of social characteristics changes over the life course of cohorts. These cohort compositional changes vary in magnitude across time, across populations and across socioeconomic groups. While this is evident intuitively, it is only rarely made explicit in demographic studies of mortality. In this debate piece, we argue that the classic demographic study of compositional change has become increasingly neglected in the field, as we have shifted towards causal inference of the individual-level determinants of demographic change. Using examples from the USA and Finland, we demonstrate how within-cohort compositional change operates for social characteristics such as education and divorce – a change driven by background and socially selective mortality, migration and changes in the characteristics themselves as the cohorts age. These cohort compositional changes produce non-linear age patterns of difference in the distribution of these social characteristics between Finland and the USA, and across socioeconomic groups, and may thus pose a challenge for the analyses of differential mortality. Ultimately, to understand aggregate, not individual, inequalities in mortality we need to more explicitly investigate how these covariates of mortality are changing in size and importance, and how they interact with indicators of social position over the life of the cohorts.

Keywords: Heterogeneity, Mortality selection, Social gradients, education, divorce

Artificial intelligence (AI) is propelling a new phase of technological change beyond routine automation, and impacts directly the domains where individuals decide if, when and with whom to have children. This debate essay outlines four interlocking chan-nels through which AI is likely to reshape – and often widen – fertility inequalities over the next two decades. (1) Labour market polarisation: AI fosters labour augmentation, capital labour substitution and the emergence of new tasks. Those impacts may in turn affect income levels as well as gender pay differentials across educational groups, and alter the economic preconditions for partnership and childbearing. (2) AI-enabled reproductive med-icine and fertility apps: machine-learning tools promise higher success rates and finer cycle tracking, yet their benefits could concentrate among affluent, digitally literate couples depending on the policy environment. (3) Algorithmic partner matching: recommender systems in dating platforms intensify educational homogamy and may entrench socio-economic assortative mating, with downstream effects on union formation and completed fertility. (4) Algorithmic influence on ideals and information: personalised social media feeds and workplace monitoring shape perceptions of the “right” timing, costs and effort of parenthood, potentially reinforcing existing divides. Whether these mechanisms merely replace earlier drivers of fertility inequality or accumulate atop them remains an open ques-tion for demographic research and policy.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence, Fertility, Gender inequality, Educational inequality, Labour market polarisation, Reproductive technology, Online dating

Quantitative demographic research is often conducted at the national level, largely due to data limitations and a lack of hypotheses about within-country variation. Yet national-level data can obscure important internal diversity, leading to potentially misleading conclusions about demographic patterns. Using the CORESIDENCE Database, we analyse subnational variation in household arrangements across 142 countries divided into 1788 subnational units. We study four key household variables: household size, number of children, number of spouses or partners and number of other members. Results reveal substantial internal heterogeneity, particularly in Africa and Asia, where subnational variation often rivals or exceeds national-level variation. In contrast, European countries show greater homogeneity, making national datamore representative. These findingsemphasise the importance of integrating subnational data into demographic research. Relying solely on nationallevel indicators risks masking meaningful demographic patterns and misrepresenting population dynamics. As traditional census data become increasingly scarce, fine-grained data are crucial for capturing the complexity of demographic variation within countries.

Keywords: Subnational data, Household arrangements, Household structures, population heterogeneities

This article addresses recent urbanisation trends in Europe. European countries are in the post-transitional stage of the demographic transition, where natural population growth is stagnant or negative, and the growth or decline of the total population is often determined by the size of the migration flows. This applies not only to countries, but even more so to regions within countries. At the same time, the role of international migration has become more pronounced. Our Debate contribution explores the role of migration in population change at different levels of urbanisation. The results show that natural population increase is still the rule in the metropolitan areas in Europe, in contrast to the strong negative growth rates in non-metropolitan regions. A typology of demographic change in European regions at the NUTS 3 level in Europe reveals that many declining regions still experience positive net migration change. The most important result of our analysis is that whereas internal migration generally follows the established pattern of urban regions gaining population at the cost of rural regions, the pattern of international migration is much more even, highlighting the potential for international migration to reduce regional demographic inequalities.

Keywords: Regional migration, Regional typology, Metropolitan and non-metropolitan population change, Spatial inequalities, International migration, population growth, Sub-national population dynamics

The global population experiencing homelessness has increased significantly over the last century. In 2021, the UN recognised homelessness as a violation of human rights, and urged member states to improve data collection and implement solutions for homelessness. This call presents both a challenge and an opportunity for demographers, especially in the US, to enhance their methodologies for counting and characterising this vulnerable population. Despite the escalating humanitarian crisis, the formal demographic literature engages little with the core demography of individuals experiencing homelessness, focusing instead on the social and behavioural aspects of the issue. A comprehensive review of this literature has identified only one article dedicated to measuring and enumerating people experiencing homelessness. Meanwhile, other disciplines are filling this gap, highlighting the need for demographic expertise on this issue. This article examines the definition and measurement of homelessness in the US, which has been estimated to affect over 770,000 individuals in 2024. It also discusses the demographic methods that can be used to study this population, and concludes with recommendations for the field.

Keywords: Homelessness, Demography, measurement, Forecasting, Unhoused populations, United States

A heterogeneous population is a mixture of groups differing in vital rates. In such a population, some of the variance in demographic outcomes (e.g., longevity, lifetime reproduction) is due to heterogeneity and some is the result of stochastic demographic processes. Many studies have partitioned variance into its between-group and within-group components, but have focused on single factors. Especially for longevity, variance due to stochasticity is far greater than variance due to heterogeneity. Here we extend such analyses to multiple-factor studies, making it possible to calculate the contributions to variance of each factor and each of the interactions among factors. We treat the population as a mixture and use the marginal mixing distributions to compute variance components. Examples are presented: longevity as a function of sex, race and U.S. state of residence; and lifetime reproduction among a set of developed countries and as a result of resource availability and pesticide exposure.

Keywords: Heterogeneity, Stochasticity, Variance partitioning, Longevity, Lifetime reproductive output, Markov chains with rewards

We examine how differences in risk composition between the overall synthetic life table cohort versus one that would be living under current mortality conditions influence life table mortality statistics. We propose formulas (i) for adjusting the force of mortality and life table statistics, eliminating heterogeneity introduced by the lagged risk composition of the synthetic cohort based on observed, fixed characteristics; and (ii) for decomposing the difference between two statistics under current risk composition, life expectancy (LE) and average lifespan deprivation (Dep) into the effects of differences in composition and of the summary mortality statistics of the subgroups. We use data on educational attainment in Denmark in 1991–1995 and 2011–2015 to illustrate these methods. The empirical example shows that the difference between the “standard” LE and the one under current risk composition is noteworthy, but the gap for Dep is negligible. Additionally, both the increase in the LEs of the educational groups and the shift in the composition of the population due to educational expansion contributed to the increase in the LE under current educational composition of both sexes. The observed decrease in Dep over the study years for both sexes resulted predominantly from the decrease in Dep of educational groups.

Keywords: Lagged risk composition, Compositional bias, Heterogeneity in mortality, period life expectancy, Educational attainment

Deprivation amplification theory suggests that the health effects of individual deprivation are amplified for people who live in areas with greater levels of deprivation. We postulate that health (represented by norovirus incidence) is influenced and amplified by deprivation (a measure that includes socio-economic factors), and believe that this association has been neglected in surveillance models of infectious diseases. We construct a social epidemiological extension of a known surveillance model to evaluate the inclusion of deprivation in surveillance models using the German Index of Socio-economic Deprivation (GISD) in an endemic-epidemic model. We evaluate model types considered in the literature on the basis of Akaike’s information criterion. Our results suggest that a social epidemiological endemic-epidemic model with the GISD for enterically transmitted infections does not need to also include time-varying contact matrices as transmission weights.

Keywords: Berlin, deprivation, Endemic-epidemic modelling, Infectious disease surveillance, Norovirus (Norwalk agent), Social epidemiology

Using Austria as a case study, this paper demonstrates how capturing life course heterogeneity improves the accuracy and policy relevance of socio-demographic projections, and how considering this population heterogeneity impacts labour force dynamics and economic dependency ratios. We introduce and apply the microsimulation model microDEMS, focusing on education, migration background, health and labour market participation. Using administrative data, the model ensures longitudinal consistency of labour market careers, including insurance periods, and considers pension rules and reforms. Despite its level of detail, microDEMS is consistent with official demographic projections. To assess sensitivity, we create alternative scenarios that illustrate how different factors affect future labour force dynamics. The main result of our simulation analysis is the quantification of substantial mitigating effects of improvements in education and already adopted changes in pension legislation, which together reduce the impact of ageing on the economic dependency ratio by 55%.

Keywords: Population heterogeneity, Dynamic microsimulation, Labour force participation, Pension reform

Reducing social inequalities in health is a priority in European policy and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. We aim to estimate the magnitude of health inequalities in Norway, a high-income country with a universal health care system but rising income inequality. Using survey and registry data, we estimated relative and absolute inequality in self-reported health, health behaviours and mortality by education and income, using the Relative and Slope Index of Inequality (RII/SII). Social disparities in health were evident across nearly all outcomes, for both income and education and for both sexes. Significant RIIs were found for self-reported health, long-standing health problems, global activity limitations, dental health and the behavioural risk factors of smoking, obesity, physical inactivity, low fruit (women only) and vegetable intake, and various causes of deaths. Inequality by income were particularly pronounced for mortality among men, with the RII for men’s all-cause mortality reaching 6.2 (CI 5.9–6.5) for income, compared to 3.6 (3.5–3.8) for education. SIIs were also significant for all outcomes, except for fruit intake for education among men. Thus, despite its extensive welfare system, income- and education-related health inequalities persist in Norway, highlighting the need for targeted policy interventions. Proportionate universalism may be a valuable strategy to address these disparities within European efforts to improve public health.

Keywords: education, Health, Income, mortality, Registry, survey, inequality

Using data on 11,726 respondents from waves 6 (2006) to 21 (2021) of the Household Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey and multi-level group mean-centred logistic regression models, we investigated differences in obesity levels among immigrants from English-speaking and non-English-speaking countries relative to those among non-immigrants in Australia, and how those differences changed with duration of residence and age at arrival.When duration of residence was not included, we found significantly smaller odds of being obese among immigrants from both English-speaking and non-English-speaking countries than among non-immigrants. When duration of residence was included, immigrants from non-English-speaking countries had an obesity advantage compared to non-immigrants with up to 19 years of residence in Australia. However, they lost their obesity advantage after 20 years of residence. In contrast, we found no significant difference in the level of obesity between immigrants from English-speaking countries and non-immigrants by duration of residence. We did not find a substantial modification in the association between nativity status and obesity by age at arrival for either non-English-speaking or English-speaking immigrants. In summary, longer residence in the host country was associated with unhealthy weight gain, especially among immigrants from non-English-speaking countries. As the proportion of immigrants from these countries increases in Australia, our findings highlight the need for tailored health and healthcare utilisation services that consider the varying obesity risk profiles of different immigrant groups over time.

Keywords: Nativity, Longitudinal studies, obesity, Australia

Immigrant children face significant disparities in terms of their survival. To investigate the role of parental origin in explaining these disparities, we used the large French socio-demographic panel, with a sample of 687,535 births from 1990 to 2020, to which a propensity score method and longitudinal approaches were applied. Our findings reveal that even after accounting for confounding factors by balancing sociodemographic variables, disparities in under-five mortality persist based on the mother’s origin. Specifically, notable differences in mortality were observed among three immigrant groups: women born in Sub-Saharan Africa, in North Africa, and in the group of regions including America, Oceania and others. Our results show no protective effect of mixed parenting on under-five mortality. Additionally, we observed that a higher proportion of children born to immigrant mothers in the municipality was associated with increased under-five mortality for children of native mothers and some children of immigrant mothers. Moreover, our study confirmed the influence of paternal support on child survival.

Keywords: Under-five mortality, Mother’s origin, Mixed parenting, Propensity score, longitudinal analysis

Despite significant progress in reducing child mortality, Nepal’s under-five mortality rate remains above the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) target of 20 deaths per 1000 live births. This study examines the heterogeneity in under-five mortality by household generations and household structure using pooled data from six rounds of the Nepal Demographic and Health Survey (1996–2022). Multivariable logistic regression models reveal that children in one- or two-generation households face higher mortality risks compared to those in three- or more-generation households. Additionally, nuclear households exhibit slightly elevated mortality risks compared to extended households. A nonlinear multivariate decomposition analysis identifies birth cohort, household wealth and maternal education as key contributors to widening mortality disparities, while maternal age at birth and preceding birth interval help to narrow these gaps. The findings underscore the role of family structure in shaping child survival outcomes and highlight the need for targeted interventions to address persistent inequalities in under-five mortality in Nepal.

Keywords: child mortality, Mortality inequality, Family structure, Pooled birth history, Demographic and Health Surveys, Nonlinear decomposition

Having leadership skills (LS) may increase an individual’s chances of ascending to a higher rank in hierarchical social structures, which can, in turn, provide the resources needed to support a partner and/or a child. Nevertheless, research on the association between LS and family formation processes (marriage, fertility) is scarce. We explore the prospective association between LS and marriage/completed fertility for 650941 Swedish males. Poisson regression and linear probabilitymodels are applied, including sibling fixed effects models. Our findings demonstrate a positive association between men’s LS, as measured at the age of assignment to military service (17–20 years), and their probability of marrying by age 39 or older (depending on the birth cohort). Furthermore, among the men in our sample, we find that LS are positively linked with the number of children, and are negatively linked with the probability of remaining childless. These associations are only partially explained by education and income.

Keywords: Leadership, marriage, Completed fertility, Male fertility

Not all immigrant populations are the same. In this article, we decompose the age-sex structures of immigrant populations in Australia and its major cities in 2021 by periods of entry. The results show a wide array of differences among immigrant populations, as well as across major cities where the vast majority of immigrants reside. Not surprisingly, we find that immigrant groups with a longer history of immigration to Australia have a more varied age-sex profile than those with a shorter history. However, even within each immigrant group, we find substantial differences across cities that reflect the influences of policy and the preferences of the immigrants. By illustrating how historical immigration streams across areas in Australia have produced different population age-sex structures, we are able to better understand why they are different and what specific services they may require.

Keywords: immigration, Migrant population, Age-sex composition, Australia

Educational gradients in both the timing of parenthood and the proportion of women having a first child have been well-documented in the literature. It remains unclear, however, to what extent educational gradients in fertility in the general population mask variation in the education-parenthood nexus between population subgroups, particularly those with a migration background. Applying discrete-time hazard models to population-wide register data for Belgium in the 1990–2010 period, this descriptive study compares the association between educational attainment and entry into parenthood between native Belgian women, women who moved to the country before age 18 (1.5 generation) and descendants of migrants who were born in Belgium (second generation). We find that first births are consistently postponed to older ages with increasing levels of education in all groups, with timing differentials being more articulated for several origin groups compared to natives. With respect to the proportion of women having a first child, we find that the negative educational gradient has disappeared among native women, whereas substantial negative gradients emerge in Southern European, Eastern European, Turkish and Maghrebi origin groups. Finally, we find that educational gradients in the second generation with respect to both the timing of parenthood and the proportion of women having a first child are more similar to the gradients found among native women than is the case for women of the 1.5 generation. This paper contributes to the larger body of research on factors that shape unfolding life courses in populations with a migration background, with the aim of enhancing our understanding of the potential implications of such increasing diversity on fertility trends.

Keywords: education, Parenthood, Migration background, Synthetic life table analysis, Belgium

How do inter- and intra-generational perspectives influence attitudes towards immigrants? Demographic studies have uncovered the roles played by parental (inter) socio-economic background and by birth cohort (intra) in shaping prejudicial or tolerant attitudes towards immigrants, but these roles have not been examined together. In this study, we do so using data from the European Social Survey, rounds 1–10 (2002–2020). In particular, we rely on the question “Is [the country] made a worse or a better place to live by people coming to live here from other countries?” to examine the influence of parental socio-economic background (class and education) on respondents’ attitudes towards migrants. Moreover, we study whether this influence varies by birth cohort. Results of linear regression models including country-year fixed effects indicate that while individuals born in recent cohorts are more pro-immigrant, the influence of parental socio-economic background has amplified in these same birth cohorts.

Keywords: Social stratification, Birth cohorts, Attitudes toward immigrants, political demography, Europe

In recent years, many European countries have experienced growing disparities between urban and rural areas. These disparities are associated not only with differences in infrastructure, public goods and cultural provision, but also with heterogeneous demographic developments. In this paper, we intersect the perspectives of spatial demography, urban geography and social stratification by examining whether spatial inequalities between educational groups have increased in six European countries since the turn of the millennium. Analytically, we focus on (a) the educational composition of metropolitan and rural populations and (b) the residential patterns of educational groups. The empirical analyses using European Social Survey (ESS) data suggest that while there are no systematic changes over the two-decade study period, patterns of residential disparities differ considerably across the analysed countries. In particular, France and Sweden emerge as countries with significant differences in residential location between educational groups. At the same time, there is no evidence that the educational gradient of place of residence is stronger among the younger than the older age groups.

Keywords: Socio-spatial disparities, Settlement types, Polarisation, European Social Survey

Scholars agree that educational gradients in fertility vary by context, with indications of more positive educational gradients in northern and western Europe since the turn of the century. However, despite theoretical and empirical research on rural-urban differences in fertility, our understanding of subnational regional variation and urban-rural differences in the relationship between education and fertility remains limited. Utilising large-scale administrative data from seven countries (Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden) at around the turn of the century, this study identifies substantial subnational regional differences in the association between female education on the one hand, and birth hazards or synthetic parity progression ratios on the other. With respect to urbanisation, we find that higher shares of foreign-born women in more urbanised populations are associated with more negative educational gradients in fertility. Hence, we present a first descriptive step towards the development of a research agenda to explain regional and urban-rural variation in educational gradients in fertility.

Keywords: Regional variation, Fertility, education, Administrative data, Europe

Amid global population ageing and evidence that health disparities in later life often stem from accumulated disadvantage, it is essential to assess health inequalities in older adults in an internationally comparable and comprehensive way. Addressing the shortcomings of analysing average health levels in a population while preserving the comparability of countries and subpopulations, we estimate Gini coefficients to examine inequalities in physical and cognitive functioning of older adults in 41 countries, stratified by gender and five-year age group. Utilising data from 11 nationally representative surveys on the health and ageing of older adults, we find substantial heterogeneities in physical and cognitive functioning inequalities across countries for both women and men. Notably, countries with higher median scores in cognitive functioning tend to exhibit significantly less pronounced inequalities. Furthermore, our results reveal a steep positive age gradient in both dimensions of cognitive functioning. Taken together, our descriptive results provide a valuable foundation for researchers and policymakers aiming to identify targeted interventions and policy measures to address health disparities.

Keywords: Gini index, Verbal fluency, Episodic memory, Handgrip strength, Gender, ageing