Iñaki Permanyer

Iñaki Permanyer

Centre d'Estudis Demogràfics

Social & Behavioural Sciences

Iñaki is an ICREA Research Professor at the Centre d’Estudis Demogràfics since 2021. Previously, he has been a Ramón y Cajal Research fellow at the same research center and a Fulbright visiting scholar at Cornell University. He is a demographer interested in the relationship between population dynamics and individuals’ well-being. He has collaborated extensively with international institutions, like the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and UN Women. Currently, he is the Head of the “Health and Demography” Unit at the Center for Demographic Studies and is the PI of an ERC Consolidator Grant (2020-2025).

Research interests

I will research the existence of new layers of health inequality that emerge because of the ageing process unfolding across most contemporary societies. I want to focus on the following research questions: what is the extent of inequality in the distribution of healthy and unhealthy lifespans across individuals? How do these inequalities vary across countries and socio-economic groups? Are the health improvements that generate populations that are more longevous also increasing the health gaps among those groups? Amid a swift ageing process with uncertain prospects for the health status of large population sectors, it is crucial to have good measures of population health that allow addressing the demographic challenges ahead. The results of this research can be extremely useful for the design of equitable pension schemes and retirement policies that are sensitive to the heterogeneous characteristics and needs of the underlying population, and for the public provision of medical care.

Selected publications

- Permanyer I, Spijker J & Blanes A 2022, 'On the measurement of healthy lifespan inequality', Population Health Metrics, Vol. 20, article no. 1, 9 pp.

- Permanyer I & Shi J 2022, 'Normalized lifespan inequality: disentangling the longevity-lifespan variability nexus', Genus, 78(1), 2.

- Permanyer I & Suppa N 2022, 'Racing ahead or lagging behind? Territorial cohesion in human development around the globe', Regional Studies, 56:12, 2086-2101.

- Vigezzi S, Aburto JM, Permanyer I & Zarulli V 2022, 'Divergent trends in lifespan variation during mortality crises', Demographic Research, 46, 291 - 336, 11.

- Piñeiro B, Trias-Llimós S, Spijker JJA, Blanes Llorens A & Permanyer I 2022, 'Estimation of smoking-related mortality and its contribution to educational inequalities in life expectancy in Spain: an observational study, 2016-2019', BMJ Open, 12, 8, e059370.

- Bramajo O, Permanyer I & Blanes A 2022, 'Regional inequalities in life expectancy and lifespan variation by educational attainment in Spain, 2014-2018', Population Space And Place, e28.

Selected research activities

Invited keynote speaker with the lecture “Age at morbidity onset and mortality dynamics” within the conference Climbing mortality models. Misurina, Italy. 

Invited as international expert to present the lecture “Cause of death drivers of lifespan inequality dynamics” at the Network on lifespan inequality. Odense, Denmark.

Invited as international expert to present the lecture “Formalizing Shifting Mortality Inequalities: A Multivariate Approach” at the 6th Human Mortality Database Conference. Paris, France. 

Collaboration with the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and UN Women in the design and elaboration of new global indices of gender inequality and women's empowerment, which will be released in the forthcoming UNDP's Human Development Report (HDR).