Chair
Tommy Bengtsson (Sweden)

Membership
Jan van Bavel (Belgium)
Cameron Campbell (USA)
Alain Gagnon (Canada)
Satomi Kurosu (Japan)
Geraldine Mineau (USA)
Michel Oris (Switzerland)
Frans van Poppel (The Netherlands)

Council Liaison
Catherine Rollet

IUSSP Secretariat Contact Person
Paul Monet

Terms of Reference

The IUSSP Scientific Panel on Historical Demography promotes work of contemporary relevance that applies a historical perspective. Connections over time, whether across different segments of the life course, or across generations, are now an area of convergent interest among multiple disciplines, including sociology, economics, demography, and public health. Specific topics of common interest are the influence of conditions earlier in life on outcomes later in life, intergenerational associations in social, economic, and demographic outcomes, socioeconomic differences in health status and demographic outcomes, and the influence of industrialization and modernization on such patterns and relationships. Historical population databases currently under expansion in a variety of locations around the world provide longitudinal data on individuals and households across multiple generations and are especially amenable to the examination of such issues.
Through a series of workshops that will bring together social, behavioural, and biological scientists at the forefront of research on these issues, we hope to instigate a new wave of comparative work that crosses disciplinary and regional boundaries, making use of novel data and methods to illuminate issues of pressing concern such as the influence of family context, health status, and economic conditions during the life-course on socioeconomic and health outcomes, the processes by which socioeconomic status and health are transmitted from one generation to the next, and the emergence of socioeconomic differentials in health, mortality, and demographic behaviour.