Vegard Skirbekk

Vegard Skirbekk (born February 4, 1975) is a Norwegian population economist and social scientist specializing in demographic analysis and cohort studies. He is a senior researcher at Norwegian Institute of Public Health and also Professor of Population and Family Health at Columbia Aging Center at Columbia University Columbia University.

Skirbekk graduated in economics from the University of Oslo, Norway in 2001, also having studied at Adelaide University, Australia. He was awarded a PhD at Rostock University, Germany in 2005. In 2000–2001 Skirbekk participated in the Advanced Studies Program in International Economics at the Institute for World Economics in Kiel, Germany. From 2001 to 2003 he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany where studied consequences of population ageing. In 2009 he was awarded the ERC "Starting Grant" which allowed him to set up his own research team. As project leader of the Age and Cohort Change Project, he has worked on extending the understanding of global variation in skills and values along age, period and cohort-lines. His group has already produced the first worldwide estimates of faith and beliefs (covering 199 countries) in a partnership with the Pew Research Center.

Skirbekk has focused on studying health, productivity, and associated determinants from a multidisciplinary perspective with an emphasis on the role of changing labor market demands, technological and cultural changes as well as variation in the attitudes, beliefs, and competences of new cohorts. From considering productivity as an output variable (e.g., measured as value-added, salary levels), a key contribution of his research has been to highlight the integral role of productivity determinants (such as skills, health, and abilities). This research has helped change the focus of age-variation in productivity from something fixed to an entity that is to a greater extent modifiable. While earlier work typically used chronological age distributions to describe trends over time and variation between countries in how "old" they are, Skirbekk's research as shown that how old a population effectively is should be based on objective measures such as cognitive and physical functioning levels rather than chronological age. Accordingly, countries can be functionally younger even if they are demographically old based on objective measures rather than chronological age structures.

Skirbekk's research has been published in a variety of academic journals (including PNAS, Lancet, Science). and has been presented in popular science outlets New Scientist). His work has been discussed in media around the world, including The New York Times, the TV news channel CNN, and The Economist. According to the Google Scholar citation index, his single-authored 2004 article on "Age and individual productivity: A literature survey” ranks as one of the most cited articles ever in the field. His work on productivity and value change has been discussed in the general media, included in an editorial in the New York Times. His work with Pew Research Center regarding global religious forecasts has also appeared in the New York Times. In addition to newspapers and academic journals, Skirbekk's work has been prominently cited in central publications by international organizations, such as OECD, the UN World Economic and Social Survey, and the National Academy of Sciences.

• Skirbekk, Vegard; Stonawski, Marcin; Alfani, Guido (2015). "Consequences of a universal European demographic transition on regional and global population distributions". Technological Forecasting and Social Change. 98: 271–289. doi:10.1016/j.techfore.2015.05.003. ISSN 0040-1625. 
• Kinge, Jonas Minet; Strand, Bjørn Heine; Vollset, Stein Emil; Skirbekk, Vegard (2015). "Educational inequalities in obesity and gross domestic product: evidence from 70 countries". Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health: jech–2014–205353. doi:10.1136/jech-2014-205353. ISSN 0143-005X. 
• Skirbekk, V.; Blekesaune, M. (2014). "Personality traits increasingly important for male fertility: Evidence from Norway". European Journal of Personality. 28 (6). doi:10.1002/per.1936. 
• Bowen, C.; Skirbekk, V. (2013). "National stereotypes of older people's competence are related to older adults' participation in paid and volunteer work". The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences. 68 (6): 974–983. doi:10.1093/geronb/gbt101. 
• Skardhamar, T.; Skirbekk, V. (2013). "Relative mortality among criminals in Norway and the relation to drug and alcohol related offenses". PLOS ONE. 8 (11): e78893. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0078893. 
• Skirbekk, V.; Loichinger, E.; Weber, D. (2012). "Variation in cognitive functioning as a refined approach to comparing ageing across countries". PNAS. 109 (3): 770–774. doi:10.1073/pnas.1112173109. 
• Skirbekk, V.; Goujon, A.; Kaufmann, E. (2010). "Secularism, Fundamentalism, or Catholicism? The religious composition of the United States to 2043". JSSR. 49 (2): 293–310. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2010.01510.x. 
• Skirbekk, V. (2008). "Age and productivity potential: A new approach based on ability levels and industry-wide task demand". PDR. 34: 191–207. JSTOR 25434764. 
• Lutz, W.; Kritzinger, S.; Skirbekk, V. (2006). "The demography of growing European identity". Science. 314 (5798): 425. doi:10.1126/science.1128313.