Research: The BiB operates within a wide-ranging scientific field, including international and third party funded projects, analyses statistical data and conducts large own surveys.
Advice: As a basis for decisions of the German Government and its ministries the BiB gives advice concerning interpretations of demographic trends and analyses. Population topics are of cross-departmental importance – nationally as well as internationally –, for instance in the field of social security, health, migration, family and education.
Information: The BiB provides information and interprets demographic topics for representatives of the portfolio, members of parliament, government officials, the educational sector, the press, companies and other groups. Furthermore, the BiB publishes articles and working papers, which are of current interest, in several own publication series. Additionally, scientific research results from external publications are made available to the public.
Administration
The BiB has 49 employees on staff, including 38 researchers. The interdisciplinary team of researchers in the institute consists of sociologists, economists, demographers, geographers and other social scientists. The BiB is divided into three research areas:
The BiB is supported in its scientific research by a Board of Trusteescomposed of nine researchers and nine representatives of the government departments. Since April 1, 2009, Prof. Norbert F. Schneider is head of the BiB.
Publications
The programme of publications of the BiB is based on three series of publications following different scientific goals:
Comparative Population Studies is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary scientific journal on demography and population studies and appears four times a year online and on an open-access basis. Since 2010 all articles are published in English.
Series on Population Studies are monographs or compilations that deal with demographic issues. The volumes appear one to three times per year.
Population Research Bulletin is a newsletter that appears every second month and informs about research results from the BiB and makes aware of population-science events and new reference material.
The Materials on Population Studies were suspended after publishing Volume 129 and replaced by the series BiB Working Paper which include research-related papers and BiB Data and Technical Reports which publish descriptions of data sets and methods. Furthermore, the BiB publishes brochures at irregular intervals.
Cooperation
The BiB has worked in several international research projects, including GGP, PPAS/DIALOG, FEMAGE, FFS and JobMob. The BiB is cooperating with the European Association for Population Studies and has organised the European Population Conference, which is the largest European conference on population studies, in 2016. It is also a member of the Population Europe network.
