New Visual Demography piece: WPP total fertility, edition by edition, how successive UN World Population Prospects revised each country's fertility.
Fernando Fernandes
Research in formal demography: mortality, life expectancy, and population aging.
de·mog·ra·phy
AmE /dɪˈmɑː.ɡrə.fi/ · BrE /dɪˈmɒɡ.rə.fi/
noun
(from Ancient Greek dêmos, 'people', and -graphía, 'description') — the scientific study of human populations: their size, structure, and distribution, and how these change through fertility, mortality, and migration.
I study how populations age and what a changing age structure means for population health, economies, and institutions. My methods are those of formal demography — decomposition and life-table analysis — applied to harmonized vital statistics, census microdata, and international population databases.
Recent updates
New Visual Demography piece: Which causes account for a difference in life expectancy, life-expectancy differences decomposed by cause of death.
New Visual Demography piece: Explaining the differences in life expectancies, life-expectancy differences decomposed by age.
New research companion: World population aging as a function of period demographic conditions, population aging and its demographic components.
Launched Visual Demography, a series of interactive instruments for formal demography: the series hub and its first piece, Demographic Flux — cohort-component projection on a Lexis surface, steered by Lee–Carter mortality and a fertility path you set.
Invited talk at Cedeplar, UFMG (PDF, 6.3 MB), with Paulo Paiva: Revisiting the fiscal impacts of demographic dynamics on Brazil's General Social Security Regime (RGPS).
Book chapter, with Cássio M. Turra: A transição demográfica no Brasil: fundamentos teóricos e evidências históricas [The demographic transition in Brazil: theoretical foundations and historical evidence]. In Populações e desenvolvimento: 30 anos pensando, repensando e construindo o Brasil.
Research report, with Paulo Paiva: Revisitando os impactos fiscais da dinâmica demográfica sobre o RGPS: muito além dos ajustes de curto prazo [Revisiting the fiscal impacts of demographic dynamics on the General Social Security Regime (RGPS): far beyond short-term adjustments]. Fundação Dom Cabral.
Research note, with Cássio M. Turra, Giovanny V. A. França, and Marcia C. Castro: Mortality by Cause of Death in Brazil: A Research Note on the Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Contribution to Changes in Life Expectancy at Birth. Published in Demography.
Selected publications
2026
Fernandes, Fernando, and Paulo Paiva. 2026. Revisitando os impactos fiscais da dinâmica demográfica sobre o RGPS: muito além dos ajustes de curto prazo [Revisiting the fiscal impacts of demographic dynamics on the General Social Security Regime (RGPS): far beyond short-term adjustments]. Imagine Brasil. Fundação Dom Cabral.
[URL]
Turra, Cássio M., and Fernando Fernandes. 2026. “A transição demográfica no Brasil: fundamentos teóricos e evidências históricas” [The demographic transition in Brazil: theoretical foundations and historical evidence]. In Populações e desenvolvimento: 30 anos pensando, repensando e construindo o Brasil, edited by Richarlls Martins and Paula Miranda-Ribeiro. Círculo de Giz.
[URL]
2025
Fernandes, Fernando, Cássio M. Turra, Giovanny V. A. França, and Marcia C. Castro. 2025. “Mortality by Cause of Death in Brazil: A Research Note on the Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic and Contribution to Changes in Life Expectancy at Birth.” Demography 62 (2): 381–404.
[DOI]
