About CPC

The Centre for Population Change (CPC) investigates how and why our population is changing and what this means for people, communities and governments.

CPC is a collaboration between the Universities of Southampton, St. Andrews, and Stirling, it is an umbrella organisation bringing together multiple projects investigating population change. These projects are financed through a variety of funders, primarily the Economic and Social Research Council.

We partner with other institutions on some of our projects. Notably, we are collaborating with the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Research (LCDM) at the University of Oxford, and the Resolution Foundation, on the ESRC funded Centre Connecting Generations.

Our research agenda is planned in collaboration with the Office for National Statistics and the National Records of Scotland.

CPC is a founding partner of Population Europe, the network of Europe's leading research centres in the field of policy-relevant population studies. 

Why study population change?

The pattern of our lives is continuously changing; many of us now remain in education for longer than in the past, we delay becoming parents and we are living longer than ever before. The households we live in are more complex with more step- and half-kin but also more of us live alone at some point in our lives. Many of us move around locally, nationally and internationally for work and family. Our behaviours interact to create the society in which we live, influencing fairness between generations, living standards and community cohesion.

CPC research aims to understand the causes and consequences of changes in births, deaths, relationships and migration to enable policy makers and planners to know how, when and where to respond. By finding out how our population is changing we can improve the world in which we live.