Latin American countries are vulnerable to a range of natural hazards; to political and economic crises; and to armed conflicts. Since 1994, the European Commission has provided over €1 billion in assistance to Latin American countries facing humanitarian crisis. However, little is known about the demographic impacts of those crises and the humanitarian aid outreach. The reason could be attributable to the lack of good quality in regional official data. Inadequate estimates have implications on the attention that a humanitarian crisis receives, as policy makers need to be aware of the sensitivity of changes in accurate figures and rates. The main objective of this project is to produce accurate demographic estimates that enlighten our understanding of the complex dimensions of a humanitarian crisis in Latin America, using Venezuela as an example. Venezuela is currently undergoing a profound social and economic crisis with far-reaching consequences for its demographic trends. As migration became the only survival strategy possible for most Venezuelans, the crisis has been spilling over the continent, leaving no country in Latin America unaffected. Studies on the demographic consequences of a catastrophe usually refer to events in the distance past, in this regard; the main innovations of this project is to produce accurate updated estimates for keeping track of the demographic consequence of an ongoing crisis. To achieve this, I will (1) apply advanced statistical techniques and demographic (in)direct methods to ensure high-quality and updated demographic estimates of an ongoing crisis; (2) forecast demographic responses to the crisis in order to shed light on public policy design and on humanitarian aid preparedness plans; and (3) use a cross-country comparison and regional perspective to account for the feedback effects among neighbouring nations.

In the last decades, social inequalities within countries and the rise in socio-economic differences between European countries have been an increasing policy concern. Education plays a chief role as a resource to fight poverty and to ensure greater social and territorial cohesion, within and across countries, as recognised by the Europe 2020 strategy. Supporting individuals to achieve tertiary education is a necessary policy-target, however, in the long-term, it may not be sufficient to eradicate educational differences across countries. This is especially due to the links between differential demographic behaviours by educational groups and the intergenerational transmission of education. Keeping a comparative approach by country and sex, this project aims at highlighting macro-level consequences of the educational gradient in family formation processes and the transmission of tertiary education from one generation to the next one. To this end, I will use the most recent comparable cross-country individual survey-data (SHARE, GGS), and I will apply advanced statistical techniques (i.e., decomposition and simulation methods) that permit to reconcile micro-macro levels of analysis. This project emphasizes the fact that enacting family policies, which aim to flatten the educational gradient in demographic behaviour, is a possible way to reduce educational differences across European countries. Next, I also emphasize the bidirectional relationship between parent-children generations. On the one hand, I focus on the transmission of education from parents to children and, on the other hand, I refer to (potential) feedback effects of children’s education on parents’ survival. Overall, this project will uncover the connections between the fields of demography and social inequalities. Low fertility and higher life expectancy at older ages, which are the drivers of population ageing, are not necessarily bad outcomes when they may lead to a decrease in social inequalities.