PopHel Newsletter: March - September 2025

A few highlights: In August, Julia Hellstrand received the prestigious .  In September, we organised a symposium at the Society for Longitudinal and Lifecourse Studies (SLLS) Annual Conference in Fribourg, Switzerland on “Leveraging Nordic Register Data to Study Health Inequalities”. Starting in October, we will work on a new 3+3-year project entitled “Population projections for migration scenarios, human capital development, and sustainable integration (MigScene)” funded by the Research Council of Finland. Finally, we have seen our dear colleagues Philipp Dierker and Juha Luukkonen successfully defending their PhD theses in August and September.

Besides research, we played a lot of Mölkky, a Finnish traditional yard game, and even hosted internal Mölkky Olympics at the end of the summer. A victory was claimed by Moritz Oberndorfer. Other PopHel activities included barbequing, visiting an art exhibition on an island in pouring rain, and some enthusiastic karaoke.

To receive our newsletter, which we aim to send out twice a year, you can subscribe to our mailing list by sending an email to . Subscribers of our mailing list will also receive information on upcoming public talks and open positions at PopHel. You can also follow our activities on Blue Sky or on .

PopHel Talks – online seminar

Earlier this year, we kicked off our new online seminar series PopHel Talks that is open to all. In these talks, researchers at PopHel, current visiting researchers, or guest speakers will give 30-minutes presentations (+15-minute discussion) on their current research. Please, feel free to share our invitation to PopHel talks with colleagues who may be interested.

The next presentation will be on the 13th of October 2025 at 14:00 Eastern European Time by Joonas Pitkänen on family-based designs in childhood adversity research. Read more .

On Monday 8th of December 2025 at 14:00 Eastern European Time, Elina Einiö will be presenting at PopHel Talks.

Up to date information on upcoming talks can be found on our . Please register  for a Zoom link to the seminar.

Open positions

We have opened two positions for postdoctoral researchers on social inequalities in health connected to Pekka Martikainen’s ERC Advanced Grant and the  Max Planck – University of Helsinki Center for Social Inequalities in Population Health (MaxHel). Deadline for applications is the 31st of October 2025. More details can be found .

New projects, awards, graduations, nominations

Wolfgang Lutz’s, Mikko Myrskylä’s and Mirkka Danielsbacka’s 3+3-year project “” funded by the Strategic Research Council (SRC) established within the Research Council of Finland, will start in October 2025. A description of the project can be found here: .

Pekka Martikainen is in the advisory board of a recently started 4-year project  Work, health, inequalities: A lifecourse approach at Ined - Institut national d'études démographiques, France.

Julia Hellstrand was awarded the  in August.

Philipp Dierker successfully defended his PhD thesis “” at the University of Helsinki in August 2025.

Juha Luukkonen successfully defended his PhD thesis “” at the University of Helsinki in September 2025.

Newcomers

Kasper Kotisaari will start as a project planner in October 2025, working on the project titled 'Minority Stress and Gendered Lives of Same-Sex Couples and Their Children in Finland (MISTLIFE),' funded by the Research Council of Finland. Previously, he worked as a project researcher at LUT University of Lappeenranta on several projects, including data collection for research on aging and perceptions of old age, as well as project design and implementation related to employers’ views on the future skills needed in the forestry sector. He holds a master’s degree in social science from the University of Helsinki, specializing in sociology. His thesis focused on socioeconomic differences in perceived neighborhood safety, and he maintains a strong interest in research on socioeconomic status and inequality. Contact:

Silja Keränen has started as a research assistant in August 2025. Alongside this role, she is completing her master’s degree in Demography at the University of Helsinki. Her thesis examines re-employment after fixed-term disability pensions due to mental health diagnoses. Previously, she worked as a research trainee at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL), where she contributed to research on immigrants’ use of specialized healthcare services and diagnoses in relation to labour market outcomes. Contact:   

Pauliina Halonen has started as a postdoctoral researcher in September 2025. She holds a PhD in health sciences (gerontology) with a background in public health. Her main interests in research are health and inequalities in old age and health in ageing societies. She is concurrently working at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (50%) and at the Tampere University (10%). Contact:

Lotta Lintunen: has started as a postdoctoral researcher in September 2025. She will defend her PhD in Political and Social Sciences, Sociology, in November. She has a background in social mobility and stratification, with particular interest in educational inequalities. Her current research interests include emerging adulthood and mental health. Contact:

Visiting researchers at PopHel

• Michael Berger (April 2025–March 2026), from Medical University of Vienna; Erwin-Schrödinger fellowship by the Austrian Science Fund, Grant ID: 10.55776/J4904
• Xenia Vidal Ortiz (June-August) from Universidad Internacional de Catalunya (UIC)
• Neil Mehta (May) from University of Texas Medical Branch, USA
• Octavio Bramajo (May) from University of Texas Medical Branch, USA
• Leah Abrams (May) from Tufts University, USA
• Silvia Loi (May) from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Germany
• Andrew Stokes (May) from Boston University, United States
• Marcus Ebeling (May) from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Germany
• Aapo Hiilamo (January-April and October-November) from Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Germany
• Heini Väisänen (August) from Ined - Institut national d'études démographiques, France

Interested in visiting PopHel? Apply to the  that covers 1–2 months visits to the Finnish Infrastructure for Register-Based Research (FIRE) to collaborate with our researchers. The call is open 25.9.–22.10.2025.

PopHel research visits

• Lotta Volotinen visited Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Germany, in March–May, 2025 as an affiliated PhD student in the International Max Planck Research School for Population, Health and Data Science (IMPRS-PHDS) doctoral program.
• Elina Einiö visited the Stockholm University Demography Unit (SUDA) in Sweden in May 2025 to work on the family life of same-sex couples with Martin Kolk.
• Hanna Remes visited the Ined - Institut national d'études démographiques, France, in May 2025 to attend a workshop on measurement of miscarriage and work with Heini Väisänen.
• Ricarda Duerst and Julia Hellstrand visited Statistics Finland in June 2025. Ricarda held a two-day course teaching the new Probabilistic Fertility Scenarios (PFS) R-package.

Conferences, Workshops and Meetings

Upcoming

Berlin Demography Days, Berlin, Germany, 27–28 October 2025

• Julia Hellstrand (Ceremony of the European Demographer Award 2024)

European Public Health Conference, Helsinki, Finland, 11–14 November 2025

• Moritz Oberndorfer “Social inequalities in birthweight in times of crisis. A cross-country analysis of social inequalities in birthweight before and during COVID-19 pandemic” (poster)
• Alvaro Obeso “Smoking and BMI change association across adulthood: pooled analysis of 13 longitudinal twin cohorts” (poster)
• Niina Metsä-Simola “Macro-level social determinants of antimicrobial resistance: Evidence from 94 countries” (oral)
• Niina Metsä-Simola “Heterogeneity in educational outcomes following ADHD: a full population register-study in Finland” (poster)
• Niina Metsä-Simola “Relative age effect in the probability of ADHD diagnosis in Finland: emergence at school entry” (poster)
• Lotta Volotinen “Age at ADHD diagnosis and educational outcomes: a register-study of Finnish 1990-1999 birth cohorts” (oral)

Past events

Population Association of America (PAA) Annual Meeting, Washington DC, 10–13 April 2025

• Julia Hellstrand “Predicting ultimate childlessness by education in the Nordic countries” (poster)
• Sanna Kailaheimo-Lönnqvist “Mental Health and Childlessness: The Role of Partnerships” (poster)
• Maria Ponkilainen “Changing Landscapes of Parenthood: Childbearing among Female Same-Sex Couples in the Nordic Countries” (poster)
• Elina Einiö “Women’s Homeownership Before and After Same-Sex or Different-Sex Divorce in Finland” (poster)
• Eugenio Paglino “Educational Mortality Gradients by Metropolitan Status and Census Region: Examining the Contribution of Educational Composition and Causes of Death” (oral presentation)
• Eugenio Paglino “Persistent Geographic Disparities Despite Mortality Reductions: Applying Bayesian Models to Estimate Municipality-Level Mortality Rates in Finland” (oral presentation)
• Margherita Moretti “Three decades of widowhood lifespan in Finland and its inequalities” (oral presentation)
• Margherita Moretti “Educational inequalities in working, retirement, and disability-pension life expectancy. A comparison of Italy and Finland” (poster)
• Luca Dei Bardi “Trends in care use by age and time to death in Finland between 2005 and 2018” (poster)
• Luca Dei Bardi, Margherita Moretti “Chronic Diseases and Multimorbidity Burden Across High-Income Countries” (discussant)

BIOSFER Synergy Camp, Ringberg castle, Germany, 1–4 June 2025

• Julia Hellstrand (brief research updates)

The Nordic Demographic Symposium, Middelfart, Denmark, 10–12 June 2025

• Hanna Remes “Advanced maternal age and birth outcomes in pregnancies from donated gametes in 2007−2017, Sweden” (oral presentation)
• Shubhankar Sharma “Decomposing the Change in Cardiovascular Disease-free Life Expectancy in Finland by Gender and Education (2000-04 & 2016-20)” (oral presentation)
• Moritz Oberndorfer “Changes in parental socioeconomic composition of birth cohorts conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic: A register-based study of 77.9 million live births in 15 countries” (oral presentation)
• Luca Dei Bardi “Seven-Year Care Use Before Death by Age and Time to Death in Finland” (oral presentation)
• Joan Damiens “Decomposition and understanding suicide trends in Belgium and Finland” (oral presentation)

The conference of the Finnish Anthropological Society (FAS), Helsinki, 16–18 June 2025

• Elina Einiö “Divorce and Sickness Absence: Women of Same-Sex and Different-Sex Couples” (oral presentation)

The Annual Sociological Conference 2025 of the Westermarck society, 20–21 March 2025

• Hannu Lahtinen “Heterogenous associations of polygenic indices of 35 traits with mortality” (oral presentation)

The 30th International Population Conference (IPC) 2025, Brisbane, Australia, 13–18 July 2025

• Xu Zong, "The long arm of childhood: The association between early-life indoor air pollution exposure and cognitive performance in later life" (oral presentation)

International Congress of Behavioral Medicine (ICBM 2025), Vienna, Austria 5–9 August 2025

• Sanna Kailaheimo-Lönnqvist “Mental Health and Childlessness” (poster)

SWECOV (Swedish Register-based Research Project on COVID-19) Workshop 2025, Stockholm, Sweden, 1–2 September 2025

• Moritz Oberndorfer “Social inequalities in birthweight in times of crises. A population-level analysis of 11 countries” (oral presentation)

Annual Conference of the European Consortium for Sociological Research (ECSR), Cologne, Germany, 3–5 September 2025

• Sanna Kailaheimo-Lönnqvist “Mental Health and family formation” (oral presentation)

Society for Longitudinal and Lifecourse Studies (SLLS) Annual Conference, 8–10 September 2025, Fribourg, Switzerland

• Symposium on Leveraging Nordic Register Data to Study Health Inequalities
  • Shubhankar Sharma “Decomposing the change in cardiovascular disease-free life expectancy in Finland by gender and education (2000–04 and 2016–20): A multistate decomposition based on total population register data”
  • Eugenio Paglino “The Immigrant Health and Mortality Advantage and Health Selection of Secondary and Return Migrants: A Register-Based Study of Finland”
  • Olivia McEvoy “Using age difference, sex-composition and family social and economic position (SEP) to detect evidence of sibling influence on alcohol misuse behaviour as a quasi-peer effect”
  • Moritz Oberndorfer “The effect of small-area-level socioeconomic ascent on the onset of cardiometabolic disease among urban residents in Finland – A target cluster trial emulation approach using linked register-based data”
  • Lauren Bishop “Joint Trajectories of Parental and Offspring Psychiatric Hospitalizations: A 30-year Follow-up of Finnish Birth Cohorts 1980–1989”
• Moritz Oberndorfer “The COVID-19 pandemic changed the parental socioeconomic composition of birth cohorts conceived during the COVID-19 pandemic: A register-based study of 77.9 million live births in 15 countries”
• Lauren Bishop “Accumulation of childhood adversities, parental socioeconomic position, and mental health treatment: A Finnish birth cohort study” (oral presentation)

36th REVES Conference, Tampere, Finland, 14–16 May 2025

• Pekka Martikainen: “Social Inequalities in Health: Life Table Approaches to Research on Aging Populations Using Register-Based Data” (invited talk)
• Margherita Moretti: “Widowhood lifespan and the evolution of widowhood expectancy in Finland over the last three decades” (oral presentation)
• Kaarina Korhonen: “Future Trends in Dementia Incidence and Mortality: Projecting the Burden of Dementia on Long-Term Care in Finland by 2040” (oral presentation)

Giornate di Studio sulla Popolazione – Popdays (SIS-AISP), Cagliari, Italy, 4–6 June 2025

• Margherita Moretti: “Trends, inequalities, and drivers of widowhood lifespan in Finland over the last three decades” (oral presentation)

Stockholm University Department of Public Health Sciences seminar series PHS Talks, September 10th, 2025

• Xu Zong: Heterogeneous associations between early-life religious upbringing and late-life health: Evidence from a machine learning approach (oral presentation)

   

PopHel research in the media

In English

• Xu Zong’s research work was featured by , AAAS and , and : Lack of breastfeeding, low birth weight and smoking during pregnancy predict behavioral difficulties for the child.
• Eugenio Paglino’s research on  was featured in news articles by , the , and the .
• Xu Zong's research work was featured by : Lack of childhood friendships linked to suicidal thoughts in over-50s.
• Julia Hellstrand’s research work was featured by : Why Finns are having fewer children than ever.

In Finnish/Swedish

• Xu Zong’s research work was featured by  and : Tutkimus: Nämä kolme tekijää ennustavat lapselle käyttäytymisen vaikeuksia
• Xu Zong's research work was featuren by  and : Ystävyyssuhteiden puute lapsuudessa altistaa itsemurha-ajatuksille myöhemmin aikuisiällä
• Julia Hellstrand från Lepplax får forskarpris – "Barnafödandet verkar allt mer bli en klassfråga". .

• Sanni Variskallio’s research was featured by several news outlets, such as , , : Koulutettujen vanhempien lapset ottivat koronarokotteen todennäköisemmin

   

Publications 01/03/2025–30/09/2025

Bishop, L., Brännström, L., & Almquist, Y. B. (2025). Trajectories of hospital‐presenting alcohol‐related disorders between early and late adulthood: Exploring the role of mortality in a prospective study of a 1953 cohort. Addiction.

Bourguignon, M., Damiens, J., Doignon, Y., Eggerickx, T., Plavsic, A., Sanderson, J. P., & Bertrand, A. (2025). Individual and Spatial Determinants of Mortality During the Covid‐19 Pandemic: The Case of Belgium in 2020. Population, Space and Place, 31(3), e70019.

Damiens, J., Junna, L., Tarkiainen, L., & Martikainen, P. (2025). Individual and parental housing tenure and mental healthcare use among Finnish men and women in early mid-adulthood. SSM-Mental Health, 7, 100444.

Dei Bardi, L., Moretti, M., Cacciani, L., Korhonen, K., & Martikainen, P. (2025). Trends in formal care by age and time to death: The use of healthcare and care-home facilities in Finland between 2005 and 2018. European Journal of Public Health.

Einiö, E., & Ponkilainen, M. (2025). Divorce in same-sex and opposite-sex couples: The roles of intermarriage, religious affiliation, and income. Advances in Life Course Research, 100669.

Ellonen, Noora, Taina Laajasalo, Mikko Aaltonen, Joonas Pitkänen, and Pekka Martikainen. 2025. “Adverse Childhood Experiences, Juvenile Violent Victimization, and Victim–Offender Overlap in Multiple Successive Birth Cohorts.” Nordic Journal of Criminology 27(1): 1–17. doi:10.18261/njc.27.1.1.

Goma H, Tanaka S, Matsuoka T, Shimizu H, Shimizu S, Zen Y, Adachi E, Ishikawa M, Silventoinen K. Cognitive performance from infancy to adulthood in Japan from 1998–2001 to 2014–2019: A study using the Kyoto Scale of Psychological Development. Intelligence, 2025, 101937, 

Hellstrand, J., 2025. Suomen väestö nyt ja huomenna. Teoksessa: Gaudeamus (toim.), Mitä kuuluu, Suomi? Ihmiset ja yhteiskunta suurten murrosten keskellä, Tiedekulmapokkari 8, s. 11–27. Helsinki: Gaudeamus

Hiilamo, A., Pitkänen, J., Moretti, M., Martikainen, P., & Myrskylä, M. (2025). Children’s out-of-home care in Finland, 1993–2020: Lifetime risks, expectancies, exit routes, and number of placements for synthetic cohorts. Child Abuse & Neglect, 169, 107626.

Kühn, M., Baranowska-Rataj, A., Junna, L., Martikainen, P. & Metsä‑Simola, N. (2025). Unemployment among single mothers and adolescent children’s mental health. Journal of Family Research, 37, 334–354.

Luukkonen J., Einiö E., Tarkiainen L., Martikainen P. & Remes H. (2025). Alcohol Policy in Adolescence and Subsequent Alcohol-attributable Hospitalizations and Mortality at Ages 21− 54 Years: A Register-based Cohort Study. Epidemiology 36 (4), 580-589.

Luukkonen J., Moustgaard H., Remes H.& Martikainen P. (2025). Month of birth and outdoor temperature after birth predict childhood atopic diseases in Finland. Pediatric Allergy and Immunology 36 (6), e70118.

Moretti, M., Korhonen, K., van Raalte, A., Riffe, T., Martikainen, P. (2025) Evolution of widowhood lifespan and its gender and educational inequalities in Finland over three decades. Upcoming in Demography. Preprint version at:

Myrskylä, M., Hellstrand, J., Lappo, S., Lorenti, A., Nisén, J., Rao, Z. & Tikanmäki, H. (2025). Declining Fertility, Human Capital Investment, and Economic Sustainability. Demography, 62(2):489–514.

Obeso, A., Drouard, G., Palviainen, T., Wang, X., Ollikainen, M., Silventoinen, K., & Kaprio, J. (2025). Proteomic associations with fluctuation and long-term changes in BMI: A 40-year follow-up study. Diabetes, obesity & metabolism, 27(8), 4192–4202.

Obeso, A., Jelenkovic, A., Drouard, G., Kaprio, J., & Silventoinen, K. (2025). Associations of birth size with BMI trajectories and fluctuation across adolescence and adulthood: A longitudinal study of two Finnish twin cohorts. Early human development, 210, 106373. Advance online publication.

Obeso, A., Drouard, G., Jelenkovic, A., Ordoñana, J. R., Sánchez-Romera, J. F., Colodro-Conde, L., Ollikainen, M., Aaltonen, S., Corley, R. P., Huibregtse, B. M., Medda, E., Fagnani, C., Toccaceli, V., Gatz, M., Butler, D. A., Bartels, M., Ligthart, L., de Geus, E. J., Christensen, K., Skytthe, A., … Silventoinen, K. (2025). Genetic and environmental effects on weight gain from young adulthood to old age and its association with body mass index at early young adulthood: an individual-based pooled analysis of 16 twin cohorts. medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences, 2025.05.28.25328482.  (Second revision in IJO, probably published this october)

Obeso Fernandez, A., Jelenkovic Moreno, A., Pena Garcia, J. A., Drouard, G., Aaltonen, S., Kaprio, J., & Silventoinen, K. (2025). Genetic contributions to BMI fluctuation and its associations with BMI and its trajectories over adolescence and early adulthood: a 25-year follow-up longitudinal study of Finnish twins. medRxiv, 2025-08. (Accepted by Twin Research and Human Genetics; In production)

Obeso, A., Drouard, G., Jelenkovic, A., Aaltonen, S., Palviainen, T., Kanninen, K. M., Salvatore, J. E., Dick, D. M., Silventoinen, K., & Kaprio, J. (2025). Genetic predisposition to high BMI and changes in BMI during adolescence modulate associations between adult BMI and plasma molecules involved in glucose metabolism. medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences, 2025.09.23.25336458.

Paglino, E., & Elo, I. T. (2025). US-born and foreign-born life expectancy by race and Hispanic origin before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Social Science & Medicine, 118191.

Paglino, E., Elo, I. T., & Martikainen, P. (2025). Internal migration, health selection, and the salmon bias: A register-based study of Finland. Social Science & Medicine, 118200.

Paglino, E., Elo, I. T., Preston, S. H., Hempstead, K., & Stokes, A. C. (2025). Evolution of the US nonmetropolitan mortality disadvantage by sex, state, and year, 1999‐2019. The Journal of Rural Health, 41(2), e70040.

Paglino, E., Wrigley-Field, E., & Stokes, A. C. (2025, June). Diverging Mortality Trends by Educational Attainment in the US. In JAMA Health Forum (Vol. 6, No. 6, pp. e251647-e251647). American Medical Association.

Paglino, E., Raquib, R. V., & Stokes, A. C. (2025). Excess Deaths Attributable to the Los Angeles Wildfires From January 5 to February 1, 2025. JAMA.

Pitkänen, Joonas, Amir Sariaslan, Lauren Bishop, and Pekka Martikainen. 2025. “Childhood Household Dysfunction and Psychiatric, Criminal, and Social Outcomes in Emerging Adulthood. A Cousin Comparison Study.” International Journal of Epidemiology 54(3): dyaf074. doi:10.1093/ije/dyaf074.

Sivertsson, Fredrik, Mikko Aaltonen, Olof Bäckman, Pekka Martikainen, Felipe Estrada, Joonas Pitkänen, Anders Nilsson, and Karoliina Suonpää. 2025. “Two of a Kind? A Comparative Multicohort Study of Juvenile Violence in Finland and Sweden.” European Journal of Criminology: 14773708251335533. doi:10.1177/14773708251335533.

Silventoinen K, Krueger RF, Jelenkovic A, Sund R, Roisman GI, Kaprio J, McGue M. Genetic regulation of body size and morphology from adolescence to early adulthood. Pediatric Research 2025, 10.1038/s41390-025-04259-8.

Suulamo, U., Remes, H., Tarkiainen, L., & Martikainen, P. (2025). Long-Term Trends in Mortality by Living Arrangements and the Role of Socioeconomic Factors, Finland 1991–2020. European Journal of Public Health, May 9, ckaf068. .

Variskallio, S. E., Moustgaard, H., Remes, H., & Martikainen, P. (2025). Association of parental education with adolescents' COVID-19 vaccine uptake: a nationwide register-based study in Finland. Vaccine, 63, Article 127615.

Volotinen, L., Remes, H., Martikainen, P. & Metsä-Simola, N. (2025). Parental education level and ADHD diagnosis in childhood and adolescence: the moderating roles of gender, age, and family history of ADHD. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 1–10.

Zai, X., Li, P., Dei Bardi, L., Korhonen, K., Moretti, M., Myrskylä, M., & Martikainen, P. (2025). Disparities in cancer stage at diagnosis, treatment, and mortality across socioeconomic groups in Finland (No. WP-2025-016). Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.

Zong, X., Meng, X., Silventoinen, K., Nelimarkka, M., & Martikainen, P. (2025). Heterogeneous associations between early-life religious upbringing and late-life health: Evidence from a machine learning approach. Social Science & Medicine.   

Zong, X., Guan, M., Zhang, Y., & Dong, G. (2025). Railways to better minds: The influence of high-speed rail on cognitive health inequalities. Social Science & Medicine.

Zong, X., Simmons, C., & Yang, L. (2025). Context matters: Longitudinal associations between childhood adversity and mental health outcomes of middle-aged and older adults in 26 countries during the COVID-19 pandemic. Journal of Affective Disorders.  

Zong, X., Li, Y., Liu, C., & Aguirre, E. (2025). Predicting children's emotional and behavioral difficulties at age five using pregnancy and newborn risk factors: Evidence from the UK Household Longitudinal Study. Journal of Affective Disorders.

Zong, X., Gan, J., (2025) Unravelling the Association between Internet Use and Loneliness Among Chinese Older Adults During the Covid-19 Pandemic: The Role of Potentially Moderating and Mediating Factors. BMC Geriatrics (doi: 10.1186/s12877-025-06325-6, expect to be online in 2025.10)

R-package

Schöley, J., Duerst, R., Hellstrand, J. & Myrskylä, M. (2025) PFS: Probabilistic Fertility Scenarios.