Berlin Demography Days

CPC-CG Director, Professor Jane Falkingham CBE, and CPC-CG Co-Director, Professor Hill Kulu, took part in the Population Europe Berlin Demography Days from 23-25 January.

The Berlin Demography Days event is a forum for different perspectives on current challenges of societal change. It provides a place for stakeholders from science, politics, civil society, business, and the media to come together to discuss the future of our population that will radically change in the next decades. The theme of this year's event was 'Overcoming Crises - Shaping policy for an uncertain future'.

Professor Falkingham took part in the panel discussion: We are ageing - Now and later: Health care in demographic change. In the discussion, she spoke about the pressures facing the "sandwich generation" - adults who are caring for parents or members of the older generation, while also caring for children or grandchildren, alongside other work responsibilities. Many over-50s are facing the choice of being able to provide more intensive care for older family members and being able to stay in the workplace. Women over 50, in particular, are more likely to exit the workplace when faced with more caring responsibilities, meaning employers are losing access to a talented pool of employees.

She highlighted that many people now live geographically away from family members, which also has implications for the expectation of providing informal care. She discussed the need to have a national and international debate about how we take care of our older people, with a focus on adequate formal care pay, the use of AI and new technologies to supplement care, as well as considering chains of care migration on a global scale. She also shed light on geographical age segregation and the importance of intergenerational communities in creating intergenerational transfers and solidarity. She also challenged the view that the generations are divided but said that being exposed to different generations outside the family is important for increasing intergenerational understanding.



In his role as President of the European Association of Population Studies, Professor Kulu presented this year's European Demographer Awards to Dr Diego Alburez-Gutierrez and Professor Daniele Vignoli. The European Demographer Award supports outstanding research on the causes and consequences of demographic change in Europe.

Recordings of all the panel discussions from the European Demography Days are available from Population Europe.

Posted 01/02/2024 12:55

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