Weaponizing Kinship: Four out of ten Colombians have lost a family member in the conflict π¨π΄
Enrique Acosta, Diego Alburez, Maria Gargiulo, & Catalina Torres quantified how many Colombians have ever lost at least a family member to conflict-related violence.
www.demogr.mpg.de/go/weaponkinship
Paper by E Acosta, @demography.bsky.social, @thegargiulian.bsky.social & C Torres first from PDR special issue I guest edited w/ L Andriano & M Ebbinghaus, Social and Demographic Consequences of Political Conflict and Violence, to be available on early view onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
π¨New paper out in Demographic Researchπ¨ and my first foray into demographic methods. It develops a new method to quantify how specific subpopulations drive demographic gaps. www.demographic-research.org/articles/vol...
@demresjournal.bsky.social @pophel.bsky.social #demography #methods
An excellent resource!
Hereβs a full draft of the upcoming second edition of my βData Visualization: A Practical Introductionβ: socviz.co
New post!
It may seem ambitious to ask for individual patient data from clinical trials to be shared, anonymized, for use by other researchers.
But the history of medicine shows us that clinical trials have already undergone a series of transformations that once seemed equally bold:
The political effects of X's feed algorithm https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-10098-2 Received: 16 December 2024 Accepted: 4 January 2026 Published online: 18 February 2026 Open access β’ Check for updates Germain Gauthier,5, Roland Hodler?5, Philine Widmer35 & Ekaterina Zhuravskaya3,4,5 m Feed algorithms are widely suspected to influence political attitudes. However, previous evidence from switching off the algorithm on Meta platforms found no political effects'. Here we present results from a 2023 field experiment on Elon Musk's platform X shedding light on this puzzle. We assigned active US-based users randomly to either an algorithmic or a chronological feed for 7 weeks, measuring political attitudes and online behaviour. Switching from a chronological to an algorithmic feed increased engagement and shifted political opinion towards more conservative positions, particularly regarding policy priorities, perceptions of criminal investigations into Donald Trump and views on the war in Ukraine. In contrast, switching from the algorithmic to the chronological feed had no comparable effects. Neither switching the algorithm on nor switching it off significantly affected affective polarization or self-reported partisanship. To investigate the mechanism, we analysed users' feed content and behaviour. We found that the algorithm promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media. Exposure to algorithmic content leads users to follow conservative political activist accounts, which they continue to follow even after switching off the algorithm, helping explain the asymmetry in effects. These results suggest that initial exposure to X's algorithm has persistent effects on users' current political attitudes and account-following behaviour, even in the absence of a detectable effect on partisanship.
A new paper shows that less than 2 months of exposure to Twitterβs algorithmic feed significantly shifts peopleβs political views to the right.
Moving from chronological feed to the algorithmic feed also increases engagement.
This is one of the most concerning papers Iβve read in awhile.
π New preprint on life expectancy trajectories in high-income countries since 2020. π
Joint work with a great team from
@mpidr.bsky.social @oxforddemsci.bsky.social @psglshtm.bsky.social @camunicampop.bsky.social
Link below. π
Useful aside: you can find the contribution of differences in initial conditions in indices from multistate with this same Kitagawa step
Another way to use Kitagawa decomposition in demography:-) onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...
π€send a student or two!
I'll be teaching again for Barcelona Summer School of Demography, "Demography with R" 6-10 July: ced.cat/en/bcn4seaso... You can do this program in person or online. Sign up, it's fun to do demography! @cedemografia.bsky.social
Join us in Bologna for the 1st meeting of the EAPS WG Open Science in Demography. Program: group intro + 2h workshop led by @jschoeley.com & @akbaritabar.bsky.social. Free & open to all. Register: eaps.opensci@gmail.com
#EPC2026 #OpenScience #Demography @eaps.bsky.social @populationeu.bsky.social
The last part abt how measles disrupts immunity vs other infections is, imo, underappreciated (& mechanism was recently clarified). It's part of why measles vaccination was seen to help beyond just reducing measles complications - not getting measles reduces severity of subsequent infections too.
Have you ever considered studying demography β also alongside your work?
Charles University in Prague is offering a part-time distance-learning programme leading to a Master's degree in Demography.
π Application deadline: 28 February 2026
Read more here: lnkd.in/dHVw-3gR
Photo: Petr Jan JuraΔka
Job opening for postdoctoral researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic-Epidemiology.
The Medical Demography research group explains its goals for studying disease progression and its effects on health and the population.
We are looking for a PhD in demography, sociology, epidemiology, or related fields with experience in quantitative health data analysis.
Apply now: The application deadline is March 22, 2026. For more information, visit www.demogr.mpg.de/go/jobs.
π’Job OfferβΌοΈNew Max Planck Research Group on Medical Demography
Marcus Ebeling will lead the team starting on 1 July 2026. The research group will be based at the MPIDR in Rostock. Read an interview with Marcus on his future research here: www.demogr.mpg.de/go/rgmd (including link to job) #postdoc
Big congratulations to Rohan Alexander & Tim Hatton for their article βThe making of a nation: Who voted for Australian federation?' which has won the 2025 Sir Timothy Coghlan award for best paper in the Asia-Pacific Economic History Review!
βOne officer told me that I "had no chance of returning to Minnesota" and that "the best thing for (me] is self-deportation." β¦
She offered me $2600 to self-deport.
I refused.
I wanted to talk to my attorney.
They didn't tell me the judge had already ordered my release and return to Minnesota.β
Giacomo, NicolΓ², Agostino and Francesca celebrating their PhD defense!
ππ© Congratulations to NicolΓ², Francesca, Giacomo, and Agostino on earning their PhDs!
It was a wonderful day filled with inspiring talks on fertility, migration, mortality, and health β everything that demography is about.
We are truly proud of your paths, well done to all four of you! ππ
Call for Applications! NextGenPop is an undergraduate program in population research, 2-week on-campus summer experience and virtual components hosted by the University of Minnesota, June 7 β 19, 2026. Deadline Feb. 5
Comparative Population Studies too!
A ready list Iβm not sure, but i know Demographic Research, Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, and Population are all free for authors and readers alike.
Population science/demography folks: Looking for a list of journals that either a) don't have OA fees, b) have reasonable OA fees (a few hundred), or c) allow authors to deposit the author's accepted manuscript in PubMed.
Does this exist somewhere? Do we need to start such a list?
This is terrible. It is also an opportunity for certain journalists to finally speak up with a *fraction* of the courage the people of Minneapolis have shown. It is also instructive that Lemon is Black. Woe/pox etc upon white journalists who donβt freak out about this.
PhD opportunity!
CPop is opening a fully funded three year PhD position on lifespan inequalities.
Apply here π
fa-eosd-saasfaprod1.fa.ocs.oraclecloud.com/hcmUI/Candid...
Screenshot of an X.com post by Senator Chris Van Hollen (@ChrisVanHollen) marking β16 years ago todayβ that SCOTUS decided Citizens United, saying it enabled unchecked secret money in politics and urging reversal, with a photo of Van Hollen speaking in an office with a Maryland flag behind him.
It all comes back to the corrupting influence of money in politics. Get it out!
Vignette: solving facility location problems with realistic travel-times.
Use the r5 routing engine to generate a travel-time cost matrix from OSM data, then optimize facility locations with a lightning-fast Rust backend in spopt-r.
Learn how: walker-data.com/spop...
Poster showing speakers for the TPN seminar series
The Toronto Population Network @tpn-uoft.bsky.social Seminar Series is happening this semester, with a great line-up, including @lucampesando.bsky.social, Orsola Torrisi, @mdhayward.bsky.social, and @jnobles.bsky.social! Starts next Tuesday. If you're in Toronto please come along!
MiCDA is excited to announce that our call for Research Fellow proposals is now open! Early career faculty are invited to submit proposals for pilot research related to the demography of aging. Visit myumi.ch/P34p4 for details. We look forward to your submissions by March 2.
π’ #episky #mortality
New year, new #STMF data π
Revised and updated data available π
β‘οΈ mortality.org/Data/STMF
π STMF data access is now limited to registered #HMD users to protect sensitive data. Log in with your existing HMD credentials to download the data series.
