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Vegard Skirbekk (born February 4, 1975) is an Norwegian social scientist specializing in demographic analysis and cohort studies. He is currently a research scholar and project leader of the Age and Cohort Change Project at IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) and a part-time senior researcher position at Norwegian Institute of Public Health.

Background
Skirbekk graduated in economics from the University of Oslo, Norway in 2001, also having studied at Adelaide University, Australia. He was awarded a PhD at Rostock University, Germany in 2005. In 2000-2001 Skirbekk participated in the Advanced Studies Program in International Economics at the Institute for World Economics in Kiel, Germany. From 2001 to 2003 he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany. Since October 2003 he has been working as a research scholar at IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis). He also has worked part-time at Statistics Norway and has worked at the Norwegian Institute for Public Health. In 2009 he was awarded the ERC “Starting Grant” which allowed him to set up his own research team, which he did at IIASA. As project leader of the Age and Cohort Change Project he has worked on extending the understanding of global variation in skills and values along age, period and cohort-lines. His group has already produced the first worldwide estimates of faith and beliefs (covering 199 countries) in a partnership with the Pew Research Center.

Research
Skirbekk has focused on studying health, productivity, and associated determinants from a multidisciplinary perspective with an emphasis on the role of changing labor market demands, technological and cultural changes as well as variation in the attitudes, beliefs, and competences of new cohorts. From considering productivity as an output variable (e.g., measured as value-added, salary levels), a key contribution of his research has been to highlight the integral role of productivity determinants (such as skills, health, and abilities). This research has helped change the focus of age-variation in productivity from something fixed to an entity that is to a greater extent modifiable. While earlier work typically used chronological age distributions to describe trends over time and variation between countries in how "old" they are, Skirbekk's research as shown that how old a population effectively is should be based on objective measures such as cognitive and physical functioning levels rather than chronological age. Accordingly, countries can be young even if they are demographically old based on functional measures rather than chronological age structures. Skirbekk's research has received considerable attention in several general science journals (e.g., New Scientist). His work has been discussed in media around the world, including The New York Times, the TV news channel CNN, and The Economist. According to the Google Scholar citation index, his single-authored 2004 article on “Age and individual productivity: A literature survey” ranks as one of the most cited articles ever in the field. His work on productivity and value change has been discussed in the general media, included in an editorial in the New York Times and in The Economist. His work with Pew Research Center regarding global religious forecasts has also appeared in the New York Times. In addition to newspapers and academic journals, Skirbekk's work has been prominently cited in central publications by international organizations, such as OECD, the UN World Economic and Social Survey, and the National Academy of Sciences.

Selected Publications