Prof. Anna Matysiak
Anna Matysiak was born in 1979. She graduated with two degrees from Warsaw School of Economics (SGH) – in economics and quantitative methods and information systems (2003). In 2006, she secured the title of European Research Master in Demography at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock. Anna Matysiak received her PhD in economics in 2009 from SGH based on a dissertation on the interdependencies between fertility and female labor force participation. She earned her habilitation in economics in 2017 and was awarded the title of professor of social sciences in the discipline of economics and finance in 2024.
She began her academic career at the Institute of Statistics and Demography of SGH, where she worked from 2003 to 2013. She was subsequently employed at the Vienna Institute of Demography of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2013–2019). As of 2019, Prof. Matysiak works at the University of Warsaw, where she heads the Interdisciplinary Centre for Labour Market and Family Dynamics (LabFam). She is also editor-in-chief of the journal Demographic Research and vice-president of the European Association for Population Studies (EAPS).
Prof. Matysiak’s research examines how labor-market transformations in Poland and Europe, such as globalization and technological change, affect child-bearing decisions, and how family circumstances shape the professional careers of women and men. Her work draws on labor economics, demography, and family sociology while taking advantage of innovative quantitative methods. In 2019, Prof. Matysiak received a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant for the LABFER project on the impact of technological change and globalization on fertility. She is also a co-author of projects funded under Horizon Europe and the National Science Centre, investigating the effects of changes in labor markets, including those triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, on gender equality and family functioning.
The scientific output of Prof. Matysiak includes more than 60 publications, most of which are articles in peer-reviewed journals, such as Demography, European Journal of Population, Population Studies, Journal of Marriage and Family, Social Science Research and Work, Employment and Society. Scholars around the world cite Prof. Matysiak’s work in the fields of demography, family economics, and sociology.
She has received numerous awards for her research achievements, including the START scholarship from the Foundation for Polish Science (2007), the Polityka weekly award (2009), the Minister of Science and Higher Education Award (2013), the National Science Centre Award (2013), and the Dirk J. Van de Kaa Award of the European Association for Population Studies (2018).
Prof. Matysiak's research provides a better understanding of how social policy and working conditions can foster the reconciliation of work and family life and counteract the widening of gender inequalities in the labor market.
Understanding what shapes women’s decisions about motherhood is particularly important at a time when an increasing number of countries are struggling with low fertility rates and aging populations. The research of Prof. Anna Matysiak, combining demography, economics, and sociology, demonstrates that job stability, economic security, and opportunities to combine work and care obligations are crucial to childbearing decisions.
Already in one of her early studies from 2009, titled “Employment First, Then Childbearing,” Prof. Matysiak debunked the widespread belief that working is an obstacle to having children. Based on data from Poland covering the post-transition period, Prof. Matysiak demonstrated that women do not relinquish motherhood because of difficulties in reconciling work and parental responsibilities. On the contrary, they delay the decision to have a child until they secure stable employment. Working is therefore not an obstacle but a precondition for conscious motherhood – women need a sense of security to plan for the birth of their first or subsequent child. This conclusion has great relevance for social policy: an effective family policy should not focus merely on benefits or tax incentives, but above all on strengthening the labor market’s stability and reducing women's job insecurity.
In the following years, Prof. Matysiak expanded her analyses to other European countries. In her 2021 paper “The Great Recession and Fertility in Europe,” she established that rising unemployment, especially during the post-2008 economic crisis, significantly reduced birth rates. The relationship between economic uncertainty and reproductive decisions proved stronger during the recession than in previous years, confirming the importance of stability and certainty about the future for childbearing decisions.
Prof. Matysiak’s latest research on the impact of technological transformations in the labor market on fertility rates provides an even broader perspective. In the article “Industrial Robots and Regional Fertility in European Countries” (2023), the researcher and her team demonstrate that regions where new technologies, such as automation and robotization, reshape employment structures and reduce the sense of job stability experience declines in fertility.
An important achievement of Prof. Matysiak is the integration of the Central and Eastern European experience into mainstream European fertility research. While most prior analyses focused on Western Europe, her research shows that post-communist societies, with high female labor force participation, conservative social norms, and limited institutional support, provide exceptionally valuable empirical material. Understanding the processes taking place in countries such as Poland enables the development of more complex theories linking individual decisions to labor market conditions.
The research of Prof. Matysiak demonstrates that decisions about motherhood are not solely a matter of individual choice but reflect a complex network of links between the labor market, social policy, and culture. Her work helps explain why fewer and fewer children are being born in Europe, and what can be done to support both families and women's professional development. This is science with genuine social relevance.
