Yesterday evening in Berlin five young academics were awarded the "Allianz prize for young researchers specializing in demography" for innovative demographic research. The Vice-President of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Demographie e.V. (German Society for Demography - DGD), Prof. Dr. Sonja Haug and Professor Volker Deville, demography expert at Allianz, honored selected applications at an official ceremony.
"The young researchers have shown with their chosen topics , such as migration, elderly care or energy consumption, that demographic change is inevitably linked to the future prospects of young people. With the Allianz prize for demography we want to encourage young researchers who are making a substantial contribution to the pressing questions of demographic change," explains Deville. Allianz has been the official sponsor since last year. The award ceremony took place as part of the annual meeting of the DGD under the chairmanship of Prof. Tilman Mayer.
Since 1989, the DGD has awarded the prize to young researchers with the aim of supporting young academics who specialize in demographic issues. Several academic works that were submitted in advance had been evaluated by the DGD’s expert committee. The submissions were full of creative approaches to resolving the issues that engaged with current debates in demographic research. The first prize awarded yesterday evening went to Martin Kohls from the University of Bielefeld for his work "The Demography of Migrants in Germany". Kohls’s documentation shows that the proportion of people from immigrant families will rise significantly faster than had been previously assumed. His findings therefore provide an important basis for planning effective integration policy.
