Esrc Centre For Population Change

Funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, the ESRC Centre for Population Change (CPC) is investigating how and why our population is changing and what this means for people, communities and governments. The Centre is a joint partnership between the Universities of Southampton, St. Andrews, Edinburgh, Stirling and Strathclyde. Our research agenda is planned in collaboration with the Office for National Statistics and the National Records of Scotland. 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. 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.