Gender, families, and households

Changing family dynamics shapes future societies.

Changing family dynamics, such as shifts in the timing of fertility or number of children and family diversity plays a crucial role in shaping societies.

The Centre also has expertise in the study of family structure, complexity and dynamics and fertility processes. Research has examined educational assortative mating, twinning across the world, cohort trends in sibship size and the relationship to educational attainment and internationally, grandparenthood and subjective wellbeing. Work also focuses on cash transfers and household dynamics, the importance of marriage for the intergenerational transmission of income and how mass education has altered women's autonomy in Latin America.

We have also engaged in the biosocial examination of family and fertility processes where we discovered 371 genetic variants linked to age at first sex and birth, identified variants linked to number of children and demonstrated the importance of the inclusion of the family in genomic estimates.

18 Dec 2023

The relationship between early-life diseases and lifetime childlessness in Finland and Sweden

An international study involving the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and University of Helsinki’s Institute for Molecular Medicine in Finland reveals a significant association between 74 early-life diseases and the likelihood of remaining childless throughout one's life, with 33 of these diseases prevalent in both women and men.

Einstein Center Population Diversity Director Dr Paul Gellert presenting at launch event in Berlin

9 Apr 2024

Oxford-Berlin alliance launches the Einstein Centre Population Diversity

Launched today, the Einstein Center Population Diversity (ECPD) will become a leading institution in biosocial research. ECPD is an interdisciplinary collaboration that brings together leaders in social and health sciences across Berlin and Oxford, including members of the Berlin University Alliance, the University of Oxford in Berlin, and the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science (LCDS).

16 Jun 2023

Establishing a REAL research unit

The Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science is part of a winning consortium to establish a £3.72 million REAL research unit for the Health Foundation that will transform our understanding of health and social care.

New study on human fertility

This video outlines the findings of a ground-breaking Nature Human Behaviour study co-authored by our Director professor Melinda Mills alongside Iain Mathieson and John Perry et al. that identifies genetic variants influencing human fertility. Find out more here.