This event is organised by the Oxford Institute of Population Ageing

About the speaker

John Ermisch is a Professor of family demography at the University of Oxford, a senior research fellow at Nuffield College and a Fellow of the British Academy (since 1995).

John Ermisch's research is concerned with the structure and dynamics of families and their interaction with wider society. His recent research has studied the allocation of resources within the family, the transmission of advantage across generations, non-marital childbearing, the interaction of child support and non-resident fathers' contact with their children, the impact of family ties on trust in strangers and the effect of fertility expectations on residential mobility. Currently he is studying the intergenerational exchange of in-kind support, including the geographic proximity of parents to children, the impacts of interactions with friends, families and neighbours on older people's well-being and the effect of family ties on residential mobility. He is co-investigator for the ESRC-supported project called Life Course and Family Dynamics in a Comparative Perspective. It is a cross-national study involving partners from China, the Netherlands and Germany as well as the UK. A primary objective is to compare the dynamics of changes over the life course at four key stages: child development and schooling; the transition to adulthood; security, insecurity and well- being in midlife; and intergenerational support in later life.