Counting the dead to help the living Inaugural Lecture Presented by Prabhat Jha, Head of Department, Nuffield Professor of Population Health 18 March 2026

Counting the dead to help the living: Inaugural Lecture by Prof. Prabhat Jha, Head of Department, Oxford Univ,, Nuffield Professor of Population Health, on Wednesday, 18 March 2026, from 5:00–6:00 pm (UK time). Accessible online via link below just before 5:00 pm UK.

vimeo.com/event/485875...

📢 Event alert: UNICEF + UN IGME #UNSC57 Measuring Child Mortality & Overcoming Data Gaps 3 Mar | 1:15–2:30 EST | NY + Online: forms.office.com/e/BNZxS0dZ9  Practical approaches — mobile phone surveys + analytical tools — to collect child mortality data where CRVS is incomplete. #data #mortality

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

Are we letting demographic data become just another commodity?
New paper by Edith Darin warns against the privatization of population stats. It’s time to treat these data as shared resource—a "common good"—not trade secret.
journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
#OpenData #PublicGood #DataGovernance

Responding to declining global fertility rates The levying of a 13% tax on condoms sold in China from Jan 1 is the country's latest policy aimed at reversing its falling total fertility rate (TFR; the average number of children a woman might expec...

Panic over falling fertility? 📉
A new Lancet editorial argues against coercive "quick fixes" to reverse declining birth rates. Instead of forcing a baby boom, the focus must shift to adapting global health systems for an ageing population. 🌍🏥
#GlobalHealth #Fertility #Demographics

Here is a comparison for the world population.un.org/wup/countryp...

See our online FAQ 11 on DEGURBA population.un.org/wup/faqs on the difference between the DEGURBA results and national urban definitions

Map showing eastern Afghanistan Population Density

This morning Andy Tatem is speaking at the #HumanPlanetForum sharing our Global 2 new high-resolution population datasets - as the UN launches World Urbanization Prospects 2025.

Watch live: webcast.ec.europa.eu/geo-human-planet-forum-2...

Explore detailed methods, and additional geospatial data, & interactive visualizations on the European Commission’s website. human-settlement.emergency.copernicus.eu/ghs_wup2025....

Thanks to all the team involved, but especially the collaboration with the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and DG for Regional and Urban Policy which has been key in creating the global Degree of Urbanization dataset.

The 2025 revision introduces a major innovation: integrating geospatial methods via the harmonized Degree of Urbanization with national urban definitions. This dual approach ensures consistent global measurement and sharper insights into settlement patterns for sustainable development

Today, launching the World Urbanization Prospects 2025 with new UN estimates and projections of urbanization for
237 countries and areas of the world & 12,000+ cities with 50,000+ inhabitants in 2025. www.un.org/development/... - see also new online datasets and plots: population.un.org/wup/

UK Humanitarian Innovation Hub: Funding Opportunity: Mortality Estimation in Humanitarian Crises - Systems Innovation Partnership: To apply and/or share - Call for Expressions of Interest (lnkd.in/e7cv_VUS) - UKHIH Website (www.ukhih.org/news/now-ope...).
► EOI deadline: 11 August 2025, 5pm UTC

For further details about teh UN projection assumptions and methods, see: population.un.org/wpp/methodol..., in particular: World Population Prospects 2024: Methodology of the United Nations Population Estimates and Projections. population.un.org/wpp/assets/F...

See also online data sources for each country underlying empirical data: population.un.org/wpp/data-sou... including interactive plots: population.un.org/dataportal/d...

If you have any additional ideas about what the UN should do about this statistical modelling challenge, all ideas are welcome to explore for future potential improvements, and out-of-sample validation at national and subnational level.

BBC Radio 4 - More or Less: Behind the Stats, Is the UN underestimating the global fall in fertility? How one graph shows the conservative side of the United Nations’ population estimates

A recent interview with BBC Radio 4 - More or Less: Behind the Stats, Is the UN underestimating the global fall in fertility? www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p... and online TFR plots to browse more countries: population.un.org/wpp/graphs?l...

🚨Job Offer🚨
St Andrews–Max Planck PhD Studentship in Population, Health and Data Science
3.5-year St Andrews–Max Planck PhD studentship in Population, Health and Data Science.
Deadline: June 11
@mpidr.bsky.social @uniofstandrews.bsky.social @imprs-phds.bsky.social
www.demogr.mpg.de/en/career_61...

🚨 New paper: when researchers study epidemics, disasters, or conflicts but don't know how many people died, they often subtract pre and post population estimates or do a crude projection. Unfortunately, this almost never provides an accurate death toll 🧵

www.demographic-research.org/Volumes/Vol5...

Reminder that the Formal Demography Working Group is meeting tomorrow! Sign up to receive Zoom details: formaldemography.github.io/working_group/

Topical cluster map of terms used in recently cancelled NIH grants. No surprises there I guess. Data by grant-watch.us and NYT for the flagged terms. Source code available here github.com/jschoeley/gr....

See also childmortality.org?indicator=SBR from UN-IGME for global and country data and internationally comparable estimates of stillbirth rates, neonatal and infant mortality available in an harmonized way. See also PDF reports and articles at the bottom of the home page.

Where in the world are babies at the lowest risk of dying? It’s difficult to compare countries because they don’t always measure infant mortality in the same way.

Where in the world are babies at the lowest risk of dying?

Seems simple to answer, but countries count live births and infant deaths slightly differently.

I look at the data in my latest article: ourworldindata.org/where-are-ba...

🆕 study reveals global patterns of the migration of scientists shedding light on how researchers move both within and between countries.
A team of researchers @mpidr.bsky.social found large disparities in the appeal of various countries and regions to scientists.
www.demogr.mpg.de/go/migration...

Norrköping campus at sunset

We are hiring postdocs in Computational Social Science
📍SweCSS, Norrköping, Sweden
⏰Deadline June 3
🔗https://liu.se/en/work-at-liu/vacancies/26854
Please apply // help us spread the word

2025 Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID) The 2024 Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID) report presents the data and analysis behind the 75.9 million people living in internal displacement as of the end of 2023. It is the ninth editi...

2025 Global Report on Internal Displacement (GRID) | IDMC - Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre
www.internal-displacement.org/global-repor...

Some potential funding support for UK students who are assessed as having a Home/UK fee status and who meet the residency requirements as defined by ESRC Studentship regulations.

Smarter refugee surveys for a more effective humanitarian response UNHCR and WorldPop are innovating the mapping of displaced populations and unlocking the power of registration data

Using satellite imagery and advanced spatial modelling we are collaborating with #UNHCR to innovate mapping of displaced populations and unlocking the power of registration data.

By WorldPop's Dr Sarchil Qader and Edith Darin, and others.

#refugees #geodata #mapping

medium.com/unhcr-innova...

📢 L’IR Progedo #recrute un ou une ingénieur·e d'études en production, traitement, analyse de données et enquêtes dans le cadre du projet ANR EXO-POPP, sous la direction de @sandrabree.bsky.social.

🔗 En savoir plus : exopopp.hypotheses.org

📌 Postulez avant le 1ᵉʳ juin 2025 : bit.ly/43hMBZV

Opinion | MAGA Natalism Is Doomed to Fail

East Asia demonstrates that financial incentives alone are insufficient to reverse declining birthrates. Deep-rooted issues like gender inequality in childcare, high living/education costs, and work-life imbalance need addressing for any profamily policy to succeed.
www.nytimes.com/2025/04/21/o...