Gender Inequalities and Fertility
The Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) will launch a new Max Planck Research Group in June, focusing on explanations why family life events such as union formation, separation, parenthood and family extension play out differently for women and men. The group is led by Nicole Hiekel.
The major demographic trends in family structures and change across high-income countries are well known: fertility rates have declined, childbearing occurs later, not necessarily in marital unions or with one lifelong partner only. Relationships forms have become more diverse and less stable.
But similar family life courses lead to different outcomes for men and women. That is why gender inequalities are an important factor in demographic research as they may either determine, moderate or result from fertility and family change.
“Demography will make a leap forward when we better understand the mechanisms explaining why life events such as union formation, separation, parenthood and family extension play out differently for women and men”, says Nicole Hiekel, the Leader of the independent Max Planck Research Group “Gender Inequalities and Fertility”.
Nicole Hiekel was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Sociology and Social Psychology at the University of Cologne before joining the German Youth Institute in Munich. She is affiliated to the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute in The Hague. At the intersection of sociology and demography, her research has contributed to demographic theory building on how social inequalities interact with demographic processes and applied innovative methods to study the intergenerational transmission of relationship behavior.
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Kinship Inequalities
A new independent Max Planck Research Group led by Diego Alburez-Gutierrez will be launched in May. The group will study how differences in kinship among persons and groups determine individual outcomes and structure human societies.
Kinship is a fundamental and universal form of social structure. All humans have kin ties in the same way that all humans are born and die. Yet, the degree to which individuals benefit from these ties varies greatly. “We refer to the differences in kin presence, kin availability, and kin resources as kinship inequalities,” says Research Group Leader Diego Alburez-Gutierrez. For example, longer lifespans allow grandparents to spend more time with their grandchildren. That is a positive development for grandchildren, grandparents, and parents, who benefit from childcare support. In practice, these gains are unevenly distributed among sub-populations that have different legacies of mortality and fertility.
The independent Max Planck Research Group on Kinship Inequalities will conduct research to advance the subfield of kinship demography in general and the study of kinship inequalities in particular. Max Plank Research Groups are independent research teams working on specific topics. The Kinship Inequalities group will initially employ two postdoctoral researchers and one PhD Student to study the implications of kinship inequalities for individuals, families, and societies.
Diego Alburez-Gutierrez holds a PhD in Demography from the London School of Economics and is employed as a Research Scientist at the MPIDR since 2019. He is interested in studying the drivers and implications of demographic change from a kinship perspective. His recent work has studied changes in the experience of life events such as kin availability, kin loss, and caring responsibilities.
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