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Demography and COVID-19: risks, responses and impacts

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Like any pandemic, COVID-19 has not affected us all equally. The direct risk of infection and mortality is unevenly shared across demographic groups, and the impact of societal responses to COVID-19 has affected sub-populations differently. How demography interacts with this global pandemic has increasingly become a topic of discourse. While demographic factors such as population composition, mobility, density, and ageing may relate to COVID-19’s spread, demographic processes (births, deaths and migration) may also in turn be influenced by COVID-19. For example, evidence suggests that older people are at greater risk of dying from COVID-19 than younger individuals, and men are more likely to die from COVID-19 than are women. The link between migration and the pandemic has long been established with disproportionate impact on immigrants and their children. While immigration dropped almost everywhere due to border closer during Covid-19, there were many studies reporting migrants at a higher risk of mortality and poor health than the native-born populations. Research from past pandemics have also shown long-term repercussions for fertility, mortality and migration.

This Special Issue of the Journal of Population Research brings together issues and debates related to COVID-19 from a demographic perspective, particularly during the early period of the pandemic. It includes empirical case studies from Australia, Pakistan, Thailand, the United States and from across Europe. The papers include an examination of the impact of COVID-19 on population ageing, fertility, and excess mortality to data issues for Indigenous populations and the demographic characteristics associated with the spread of COVID-19.

Editors

  • Santosh Jatrana Santosh Jatrana , 

    Santosh Jatrana

    Associate Professor Santosh Jatrana is the Senior Principal Research Fellow and Research Head at the Murtupuni Centre for Rural and Remote Health. She currently holds an Honorary Associate Professor position at the Australian National University, a Conjoint position at Deakin University. She also had an Honorary Senior Research Fellow position at the University of Otago, New Zealand (2011-2021). Santosh holds a PhD in Demography from the Australian National University, and a postgraduate diploma in Public Health from the University of Otago.

  • Jeromey Temple Jeromey Temple , 

    Jeromey Temple

    Jeromey Temple is Associate Professor of Demography at CEPAR, and head of the Demography and Ageing Unit at the University of Melbourne. Temple is one of Australia’s few economic demographers and leads the Australian National Transfer Accounts (NTA) project. Jeromey also works on a range of other research projects, mainly at the intersection of demography, economics and public policy – and their relationship to ageing at both the individual and population level. Jeromey holds a BA in Population Studies (first class hons), a B.Com and Ph.D in Demography all from the Australia National University (ANU).

  • Tom Wilson Tom Wilson  &

    Tom Wilson

    Thomas (Tom) Wilson is an applied demographer specialising in population projections, household modelling, migration analysis, indirect estimation, advanced age populations, Indigenous demography, regional and local population change, and LGBTQ demography. In addition to working in the academic sector, he has also worked for the NSW public service and in consulting.

  • Collin Payne Collin Payne

    Collin Payne

    Collin Payne joined the ANU School of Demography following a post-doctoral fellowship at the Harvard University Center for Population and Development Studies, and completed a Ph.D. in Demography at the University of Pennsylvania. He is an ARC DECRA Fellow, an ANU Futures Scheme recipient, an Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research, and a member at the Australian Centre on China in the World.

Articles (9 in this collection)