Hans-Peter Kohler is FJ Warren Professor of Demography at the University of Pennsylvania.

He uses demography and economics, along with innovative data, to study social behaviours and outcomes that transform societies around the world: health, ageing, fertility, and family change. He is committed to making a difference through policy-relevant research, the creation of novel data resources, the effective dissemination of findings, the training of the next generation, and the building of impactful institutions and global collaborations.

Central to his research is the integration of demographic, economic, sociological, and biological approaches to better understand outcomes and behaviours across diverse populations. For example, he has investigated the causes of accelerated ageing in low-income populations, the determinants of cognitive decline and ADRD, the lifecourse consequences of early-life adversities, the long-term effect of health interventions, the role of mortality expectations for health-related behaviours, the significance of social and sexual networks for HIV behaviours and infection risks, the determinants and consequences of low and lowest-low fertility, the relevance of social interactions for demographic change, and the rapidly transforming structures of global families.

His research has been funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and other foundations. He has been awarded the Clifford C. Clogg Award for Early Career Achievement by the Population Association of America for his interdisciplinary work on fertility and health, and has been honoured with the Otis Dudley Duncan Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Social Demography by the American Sociological Association.

He co-directs Penn's Population Aging Research Center (PARC, www.aging.upenn.edu) and has shaped PARC’s distinctive identity as a globally leading centre for innovative interdisciplinary research on the demography and economics of ageing. He served as the Chair of Penn's Graduate Group in Demography for many years, and co-directs the NIA-funded Get Experience in Aging Research (Gear UP) undergraduate training programme. He also directs the Malawi Longitudinal Study of Families and Health (MLSFH, www.MLSFHresearch.org) and has spearheaded its evolution from a narrowly focused reproductive health study into a major social science research project, providing a rare record of 25+ years of longitudinal population data in one of the poorest countries in the world.