In memoriam: Jan M. Hoem, 1939-2017
Jan Hoem was the founder in 1983 of the Stockholm University Demography Unit (SUDA) and the driving force in Swedish demographic research during the 1980s and the 1990s. He held positions at the University of Oslo, Statistics Norway, and the University of Copenhagen before being recruited as Professor of Demometry at Stockholm University.
Jan Hoem remained director of SUDA until moving to become director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock in 1999. At Rostock, he formed the Laboratory for Fertility and Family Dynamics in Europe that in the following decade trained and supported many of today’s younger European family demographers. In 2009, he returned to SUDA as Professor emeritus in Demometry until his death in 2017.
Professor Hoem has made contributions to Markov chain models, stochastic stable population theory, demographic incidence rates, and the statistical analysis of multiplicative models. He is best known for his work on event-history analysis - contributions that have helped shape demographic methodology. He has shown how the careful specification of life course biographies in relation to social and economic change provides stronger evidence for links between public policies, demographic behavior, and demographic outcomes.
Jan Hoem was named the 2006 Laureate of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.
His very last publication appeared in Population Studies (2016) and was devoted to a topic that was very dear to him, that of the dangers of applying “anticipatory analyses” in demographic research.
You can read an article in honor of Jan Hoem in Demographic Research here:
Remembering Professor Jan M. Hoem
and in the Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, from Professor Gunnar Andersson and the research colleagues at SUDA here:
Last updated: April 26, 2022
Source: SUDA