Erich StriessnigUniversity of Vienna | UniWien · Department of Demography
Erich Striessnig
Professor
About
34
Publications
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779
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Citations since 2017
Introduction
Erich Striessnig is a professor of Demography and Sustainable Development at the University of Vienna, Austria. Erich does quantitative social research at the intersection of population and environment.
Additional affiliations
September 2015 - December 2016
January 2011 - August 2015
June 2007 - present
Publications
Publications (34)
This study explores how researchers' analytical choices affect the reliability of scientific findings. Most discussions of reliability problems in science focus on systematic biases. We broaden the lens to emphasize the idiosyncrasy of conscious and unconscious decisions that researchers make during data analysis. We coordinated 161 researchers in...
Background:
Europe is the world region most affected by heat-attributable mortality, but impact patterns are heterogenous. We aimed to assess the contributions to this heterogeneity of four area-level predictors (education, life expectancy, the ratio of older to younger people [ageing index], and relative income) to identify general adaptation str...
The paper reports findings from a crowdsourced replication. Eighty-four replicator teams attempted to verify results reported in an original study by running the same models with the same data. The replication involved an experimental condition. A “transparent” group received the original study and code, and an “opaque” group received the same unde...
Findings from 162 researchers in 73 teams testing the same hypothesis with the same data reveal a universe of unique analytical possibilities leading to a broad range of results and conclusions. Surprisingly, the outcome variance mostly cannot be explained by variations in researchers’ modeling decisions or prior beliefs. Each of the 1,261 test mod...
Significance
Attempts at comprehensive quantitative assessments of sustainable development can focus on either determinants or constituents of long-term human well-being. While much research on determinants has relied on economic concepts of capital and inclusive wealth, here we focus on the constituents of well-being using a demographic approach....
Lowering desired family size is a necessary precondition for fertility declines in high-fertility settings. Although accumulated evidence links socioeconomic developments to changing fertility desires, little research has disentangled the relative importance of key socioeconomic determinants. Combining individual-and community-level data from Demog...
Human well-being at the national aggregate level is typically measured by GDP
per capita, life expectancy or a composite index such as the HDI. A more recent
alternative is the Years of Good Life (YoGL) indicator presented by Lutz et al.
(2018; 2021). YoGL represents a refinement of life expectancy in which only those
person-years in a life table a...
Variation in human growth and the genetic and environmental factors that are influencing it have been described worldwide. The objective of this study is to assess the geographical variance of under-five children nutritional status and its related covariates across Indian districts. We use the most recent fourth round of the Indian National Family...
Variation in human growth and the genetic and environmental factors that are influencing it have been described worldwide. The objective of this study is to assess the geographical variance of under-five nutritional status and its related covariates across Indian districts. We use the most recent fourth round of the Indian National Family Health Su...
This chapter transforms the age-old wisdom that societies change through generational replacement into a formalized model that allows for quantitative forecasts of such societal changes for decades into the future. Using the term “Demographic Metabolism” introduced by Ryder, we show how the blend of this concept with the methods of multi-dimensiona...
Spatially-explicit population projections by age are increasingly needed for understanding bilateral human–environment interactions. Conventional demographic methods for projecting age structure experience substantial challenges at small spatial scales. In search of a potentially better-performing alternative, we develop an empirically based spatia...
Significance
Global environmental change and discussions about the drivers of international migration lead to renewed interest in population growth and global demographic change. The notion of the demographic dividend was introduced to highlight the benefits of fertility decline, yet, among African leaders, it is also often interpreted as describin...
Die Folgen des Klimawandels für die Gesundheit sind bereits heute spürbar und als zunehmende Bedrohung für die Gesundheit in Österreich einzustufen. Die stärksten Gesundheitsfolgen mit breiter Wirkung sind durch Hitze zu erwarten. Veränderungen in Ökosystemen begünstigen zudem das Auftreten von Pollenallergien und durch Vektoren übertragene Infekti...
Die Folgen des Klimawandels für die Gesundheit sind bereits heute spürbar und als zunehmende Bedrohung für die Gesundheit in Österreich einzustufen. Die stärksten Gesundheitsfolgen mit breiter Wirkung sind durch Hitze zu erwarten. Veränderungen in Ökosystemen begünstigen zudem das Auftreten von Pollenallergien und durch Vektoren übertragene Infekti...
In an era of mass migration, social scientists, populist parties and social movements raise concerns over the future of immigration-destination societies. What impacts does this have on policy and social solidarity? Comparative cross-national research, relying mostly on secondary data, has findings in different directions. There is a threat of sele...
The effects of climate change on health are already being felt today and can be classified as an increasing threat to health in Austria. The most severe and far- reaching effects to be expected are health impacts due to heat. Also changes in ecosystems which influence the distribution, frequency, types and severity of pollen allergies and vector-bo...
This is the pre-print of the Austrian Assessment Report on health, demography and climate change (ASR18) - summary for decision makers and synthesis; language German. English version is in preparation.
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) consist of 17 goals with 169 targets and 230 indicators. They provide a wide-ranging set of partly overlapping and partly contradictory social, economic and environmental goals which are important in their own rights but are almost impossible to measure in their entirety to assess whether overall there has b...
Since its inception in 2010, the Arab Spring has evolved into a situation of violent conflict in many countries, leading to high levels of migration from the affected region. Given the social impact of the large number of individuals applying for asylum across Europe in 2015, it is important to study who these persons are in terms of their skills,...
We hereby present a dataset produced at the Wittgenstein Centre (WIC) containing comprehensive time series on educational attainment and mean years of schooling (MYS). The dataset is split by 5-year age groups and sex for 171 countries and covers the period between 1970 and 2010. It also contains projections of educational attainment to 2060 based...
The present paper looks at the implications of anticipated changes in population size and composition for the projected number of deaths from natural disasters Building on empirical evidence from cross-country time series of factors associated with natural disaster fatalities since 1970 in 174 countries, the paper first highlights the major role of...
This paper evaluates the heterogeneous impact of hydro-meteorological disasters on populations along the dimensions of age, sex, and human development. The analysis is based on previously untapped cause-of-death data over the period 1995– 2011 that were obtained from the WHO mortality database, and were based on the civil registration records of 63...
This paper addresses the contribution of changes in population size and structures to greenhouse gas emissions and to the capacity to adapt to climate change. The paper goes beyond the conventional focus on the changing composition by age and sex. It does so by addressing explicitly the changing composition of the population by level of educational...
This paper evaluates the heterogeneous impact of hydro-meteorological disasters on populations along the dimensions of age, sex, and human development. The analysis is based on previously untapped cause-of-death data over the period 1995-2011 that were obtained from the WHO mortality database, and were based on the civil registration records of 63...
Over the coming years, enormous amounts of money will likely be spent on adaptation to climate change. The international community recently made pledges of up to $100 billion per year by 2020 for the Green Climate Fund. Judging from such climate finance to date, funding for large projects overwhelmingly goes to engineers to build seawalls, dams, or...
Background: When asked what a desirable fertility level for populations might be, most politicians, journalists, and even social scientists would say it is around two children per woman, a level that has been labelled by demographers "replacement-level fertility." The reasons given for considering this level of fertility as something to aim at usua...
Over the past decade, India has experienced rapid economic growth along with increases in air pollution. We examine how policies for air pollution abatement affect well-being in this context by calibrating an overlapping-generations model of economic growth to the Indian experience from 1971 to 2001 and estimating the effects of policy alternatives...
The possible impacts of the level of formal education on different aspects of disaster management, prevention, alarm, emergency, or postdisaster activities, were studied in a comparative perspective for three countries with a comparable exposure to hurricane hazards but different capacities for preventing harm. The study focused on the role of form...
In this paper, we challenge the widespread notion that replacement level fertility is the most desirable level of fertility both for countries currently above and below this level. We discuss possible alternative criteria for choosing one fertility level over another. In accordance with earlier studies, we focus on age dependency as the sole criter...
In the context of still uncertain specific effects of climate change in specific locations, this paper examines whether education significantly increases coping capacity with regard to particular climatic changes, and whether it improves the resilience of people to climate risks in general. Our hypothesis is that investment in universal primary and...
Projects
Projects (2)
*This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grant agreement No 741105 awarded to Wolfgang Lutz.
This project aims to develop new indicators for long-term human wellbeing that include feedbacks from environmental and other changes.
This new project will apply two distinctly demographic concepts to address questions that go far beyond demography. It will study the indicators of and the conditions for sustainable human wellbeing. The wellbeing indicators proposed here will be based on life table methods and the recently operationalized concept of Demographic Metabolism – modelling social change through the replacement of generations – will be used to get a quantitative analytical handle on the temporal dynamics of improving human wellbeing.
The project will theoretically develop, empirically estimate, test and forecast indicators of human wellbeing that are based on life table methods and hence reflect the basic – but often overlooked fact – that being alive is a necessary prerequisite for enjoying any quality of life. But since mere survival is not sufficient as an ultimate goal for most people the person years lived at each age will be weighted with four different dimensions of empowerment: health, literacy, happiness and being out of poverty. These are four dimensions of an indicator tentatively called ELY (Empowered Life Years). ELY will also serve as the explanandum of a global level econometric estimation of the determinants of wellbeing considering human, manufactured and natural capitals as well as knowledge and institutions.
The global level analysis is complemented by a set of strategically chosen in-depth systems-analytical case studies in Namibia/Western Cape, Nepal, Costa Rica and historical Finland modelling the population-development-environment (PDE) interactions including feed-backs e.g. from environmental degradation to wellbeing and taking the trends of ELY in different sub-populations as sustainability criteria. They will also include stake holder involvement and science-policy interactions.
http://www.iiasa.ac.at/web/home/research/researchPrograms/WorldPopulation/Research/Empowered_Life_Years.html
Given the social impact of the large number of forced migrants from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan applying for asylum across Europe since fall 2015, it is crucial to study who these individuals are in terms of their skills, motivations, and intentions. The study DiPAS (Displaced Persons in Austria Survey) at the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, VID/ÖAW, WU) aims to uncover the socio-demographic characteristics of the refuge-seeking persons who arrived in Austria in 2015, with a particular focus on human capital (educational attainment and professional qualifications) as well as attitudes and values. Respondents were also asked about their origins and family backgrounds as well as journey routes and return intentions.
