Virpi Lummaa

NetResilience (Social networks, fertility and wellbeing in ageing populations: Building demographic resilience in Finland) investigates demographic change from the perspective of social networks. Close social ties affect the wellbeing of individuals, families, and communities, and supporting these networks should become a social policy priority. Our main aim is to identify network characteristics that strengthen population resilience, or the ability to adapt to external shocks. We study how population change affects social networks, and how changing networks, in turn, shape population change and wellbeing. For example, changes in size and structural features of social networks likely play a part in recent fertility declines in many wealthy societies. To study these changes, we apply complex network science methodology to real-life human networks using contemporary register and survey as well as historical Finnish data. Our practical goal is to support targeted, cost-effective regional solutions to family, youth and ageing services in regions facing either depopulation or population growth.

Consortium parties:
Antti Tanskanen, University of Turku
Markus Jokela, University of Helsinki
Virpi Lummaa, University of Turku
Anna Rotkirch, The Family Federation of Finland
Jari Saramäki, Aalto University

The Strategic Research Council (SRC) funds high-quality research with great societal relevance and impact. SRC-funded research seeks concrete solutions to grand challenges that require multidisciplinary approaches.

Turun yliopiston uutisia 14.9.2021
 

Other News

We are delighted to once again host PhD candidate Silke van Daalen, who will stay with us for most of September.

Laisk T, Tšuiko O, Jatsenko T, Hõrak P, Otala M, Lahdenperä M, Lummaa V, Tuuri T, Salumets A, Tapanainen JS:

Simon's latest work on the demography of grandmothers is now out in PLoS ONE. 

We were delighted to host Professors Martin Daly and Gretchen Perry for a day of excellent talks, with a particular focus on grandmothering and alloparental behaviour.

Robert Lynch is at the Human Behavior and Evolution Society (HBES) conference 2018 in Amsterdam

The manuscript "The transition to modernity and chronic disease: mismatch and natural selection" by Stephen Corbett, Alexandre Courtiol, Virpi Lummaa, Jacob Moorad and Stephen Stea

Two papers out now from Simon's PhD project!

1) Changes in the Length of Grandparenthood in Finland 1790-1959, published in the Finnish Yearbook of Population Reasarch. In this paper, the team investigated how the shared time between grandparents and grandchildren changed across the demographic transition and with industrialisation. This shared time was low and stable before these major events, and began to increase rapidly after they began.

2) Limited support for the X-linked grandmother hypothesis in pre-industrial Finland, published in Biology Letters. Here, we tested whether slight differences in relatedness via the X-chromosome might lead to differences the survival of male and female grandchildren with maternal or paternal grandmothers. Though two of three predictions were supported, we concluded that the X-linked grandmother hypothesis cannot account for lineage differences by itself. 

Our latest paper shows that early-life environment is associated with sex differences in adult mortality and expected lifespan. Out now in Ecology Letters:
http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/ele.12888

Figure 3a+b, from Griffin et al. 2017

Our review of the contribution of human studies to evolutionary biology is out now in Proceedings of the Royal Society B:
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/284/1866/20171164