Demographic Research Centre / Institute for Social Research/ Lithuania

About the Demographic Research Centre

The Demographic Research Centre (DRC) is a demographic research unit at the Institute for Social Research (ISR) in Vilnius, Lithuania, committed to the investigation of the demographic development of the population of Lithuania. The DRC has its origins in the Institute of Economics where after the reorganization of the Department of Development and Distribution of Productive Forces in 1984, the Division of Demography was established. In 1986, this division was renamed the Department of Demography, and in 1992, moved to the Lithuanian Institute of Philosophy and Sociology (LIPS). In 1999, the Department of Demography was granted a name of the Demographic Research Centre. Starting from the 1^st of April 2002, the DRC is affiliated to the Institute for Social Research (ISR), which was founded on the basis of the former Lithuanian Institute of Philosophy and Sociology (LIPS).

Research area in the DRC covers a wide range of subjects, mainly centered on the demographic development and population projections, family changes, fertility and mortality dynamics, migration, population ageing, and population-related policy. After the opportunities for the international collaboration became open, the DRC has entered into relations with recognized Western institutions for population studies, i.e. INED (Paris, France), Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (Germany), etc. The DRC has been involved in a number of international projects that vary in their scope and duration: Fertility and Family Survey (FFS), International Migration: Causes and Consequences, Dynamics of Ageing, Second European Comparative Survey on the Acceptance of Population-Related Policies (PPA2), Health Crisis in the Baltic Countries, etc. The DRC’s productivity as well as current and past research interests can be gauged from the volume of its publications.

During the last decade, the DRC organized many national conferences focussing on the most pressing demographic issues in Lithuania as well as two international conferences which brought together many prominent population scientists from a variety of countries. In 1990, in collaboration with the European Association for Population Studies (EAPS), the DRC organized the international conference "Health, Morbidity and Causes of Death in Europe", and in 1998, it was the host of the international conference "Regularities and Inconsistencies of Demographic Development". In summer 2000, also on the initiative of the DRC, the international workshop "Mortality and Health in the Baltic States: Research Issues and Data Reliability" took place in Vilnius; its major purpose was to discuss the recent most problematic issues of health and mortality in Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.

The staff of the DRC consists of 11 researchers. Alongside their research activity, most of the staff are engaged in teaching at the following universities of Lithuania: Vilnius University, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuanian University of Law, and Vilnius Gediminas Technical University.