Jakub Bijak, Professor of Demographic Science at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science (LCDS), is featured in a recent Financial Times article examining how demographic trends are reshaping the global economy.
The article highlights major population shifts taking place across high-income countries, including declining birth rates, ageing populations, and the growing importance of migration in shaping future population growth. These demographic forces are increasingly central to debates about labour markets, economic growth, and the sustainability of welfare systems.
Professor Bijak focuses on the challenges of predicting migration trends. Migration is one of the most uncertain demographic processes, influenced by rapidly changing political, economic, and social conditions. His research emphasises that migration forecasts should explicitly account for this uncertainty rather than presenting a single deterministic prediction.
By developing probabilistic and risk-based approaches to migration forecasting, Bijak’s work helps policymakers better understand the range of possible migration futures and the limits of prediction in complex social systems.
Commenting on the broad demographic changes sweeping through our society’s Prof. Bijak sees a need for reforms across the whole of society. There is no “silver bullet” but rather the need to react with a broad set of social, technological and policy adjustments to our changing population structure.
You can read the full article here.
