The FINANCIAL -- Five young academics were awarded in Berlin 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.

As Allianz said, the cooperation between the DGD and Allianz aims to drive forward the social discourse on the topic of demography. Allianz actively promotes knowledge exchange and is making the older generation's potential a central focus of the page 2 demographic debate. In January for example, Allianz hosted the second Berlin Demography Forum in cooperation with the Federal Ministry for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens,Women and Youth; the European School of Management and Technology; and the Robert Bosch Foundation. The Forum was launched by the German Minister for Family Affairs, Dr. Kristina Schröder, and Michael Diekmann, CEO of Allianz. "The issue of demography must become a permanent focus of international and national political debate, just like climate change.We need to act now. As with climate change, the longer we wait, the more painful the situation will be," Diekmann emphasized in the discussion at the Berlin Demography Forum in January.

The five prize winners and topics awarded with the Allianz prize for talented young researchers specializing in demography are: Martin Kohls, Federal Office for Migration and Refugees, doctorate at the University of Bielefeld (The demography of migrants in Germany); Felix Tropf, University of Goettingen/ graduate at the University of Bamberg (Gender-specific differences in care of the elderly);  Ina Berninger, University of Bremen, doctorate at the University of Cologne (Reconciling family life and work);  Philipp Joon Timpe, Technical University of Dortmund (The interplay between energy consumption and demographic change); Christian Rademacher, Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg (How successfully German municipalities are coping with demographic change).

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