Chia Liu’s research while affiliated with University of St Andrews and other places

Immigrants bring contemporary demographic changes to the destination country through their contributions to diversity, and future population. In this study, we examine the partnership and fertility trajectories for individuals with Turkish, Russian, Kazak, Polish, and Southern European backgrounds born between 1970 and 1999. We adopt a life course perspective using event history techniques on retrospective partnership and birth histories of the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) Survey. By treating first entrance into cohabitation, marriage, and parenthood as competing events, we illuminate not only the differences in family ideologies between natives and immigrants but also highlight the heterogeneity among immigrant origin groups and generations in family formation pathways. Convergence with natives occurs at different paces for immigrant groups. Controlling cohort effects and socioeconomic conditions, individuals with Turkish background stand out with an earlier and higher level of entrance into marriage and parenthood, with only modest changes across birth cohorts and migrant generations. The risk of nonmarital or pre-marital childbearing is lower for non-European immigrants than for German natives. Marriage remains an important institution to individuals of some immigrant backgrounds, despite global trends in the rise of cohabitation and nonmarital childbearing in recent years. This work serves to highlight the diversification of family types in a leading migration country.

This study analyses the effect of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 on the future of Ukraine's population. We conduct a series of population projections with different assumptions on the proportion of refugees that may return to Ukraine. Our projections show that if past demographic trends continue, Ukraine's population is projected to decline by one‐sixth over the next two decades and become older. These trends are largely driven by past and current demographic developments: continued very low fertility and large‐scale emigration at the turn of the century. With war casualties and a large portion of the Ukrainian population seeking safety abroad from the conflict, the country's population is projected to decline by one‐third. The decline would be even larger among the working‐age population and children. Russia's invasion has not only led to immense human and economic costs in Ukraine in the present but also carries long‐term demographic repercussions.