We would like to invite you to a pre-conference workshop at the European Population Conference 2026 in Bologna:
New Data and Tools to Study the Demography of Social Mobility
📅 Wednesday, 3 June 2026, 10:00–13:00
📍 Room P, EPC venue, Bologna
The workshop is organised as part of the DECIPHE project by Selçuk Bedük, Philipp Lersch, Márton Medgyesi, Sergi Vidal, and Sabine Zinn.
Please register for the workshop here: https://forms.gle/k8f6Mfjw3m52SiZJ6
The workshop is free of charge, but places are limited and will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis. Drinks and snacks will be provided.
Program
The workshop presents new data sources and methodological tools to study social mobility from a demographic perspective.
First, the workshop introduces the novel DECIPHE Contextual Database, developed to enable cross-national and multilevel analyses of the contextual drivers of intergenerational homeownership persistence across Europe. The database brings together 135 harmonised indicators for 27 EU Member States and the United Kingdom, spanning national, regional (NUTS 1–3), and birth cohort levels. These indicators cover a broad range of domains, including demographic structures, housing systems, welfare regimes, socio-economic conditions, and normative attitudes.
Second, we will present a newly collected cross-national dataset from four countries on housing tenure decision-making, with a particular focus on intergenerational factors, outlining its motivation, key innovations, and the design of the survey and questionnaire, and explaining opportunities for researchers to access and use the data. The presentation will illustrate the analytical potential of the data with initial findings on motivations to own and rent, intergenerational correlations in tenure outcomes and preferences, and mismatches between aspirations, intentions, and current tenure status, among other dimensions.
Third, we will host a hands-on session introducing continuous-time microsimulation as a method for modeling and simulating life courses in the social sciences at the cohort or population level. The session presents a general framework in which individuals are represented through categorical states and transitions between them, and which can also capture links across generations, such as the transmission of homeownership. After outlining the theoretical foundations, participants apply the approach in R using the MicSim package through examples with and without intergenerational mechanisms. All materials are reusable.
The workshop also aims to bring together researchers interested in these topics and to ignite exchange across projects and approaches.
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