INED has renewed collaboration with Japan’s IPSS (Institute of Population and Social Security Research)

Kuniaki Tanabe, Director-General of Japan’s Institute of Population and Social Security Research (IPSS), and INED Director Magda Tomasini have just signed a framework agreement that renews collaboration between the two institutions for the next four years.

France and Japan are among the countries with the highest life expectancies, and their respective public research institutes—INED and IPSS—have long conducted research in the same areas, including longevity, health, and causes of death.

They are currently working together on two research projects on causes of death. The first involves reconstructing time-series of homogeneous mortality by cause in Japan from 1979, material that will then enrich HCD (Human Cause-of-Death Database). INED is working with the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR) on this project; the HCD is maintained by INED’s DataLab.

The second involves the Demography of COVID-19 Deaths database platform launched by INED in April 2020; IPSS is providing data on Japan. The platform is an indispensable tool for international comparisons and accurate pandemic trend analysis and forecasting.

With the new framework agreement in place—it figures among the countries’ agreement on scientific and technical cooperation—the two institutes can prolong and strengthen their scientific collaboration for an additional four years. The agreement identifies six priority areas for cooperation in research and diffusion and promotion of research findings: 

• Researcher exchange programs;
• Sharing of survey data, statistics and databases;
• Development of shared study programs;
• Joint organization of work groups, seminars, conferences and other scientific events;
• Publication of research findings;
• Collaboration between the countries’ population science libraries and documentation centers.

INED has long been involved in international cooperation activities, and its actions within these partnerships have consolidated its world renown. The Institute is implicated in many international projects and networks and has over twenty international framework agreements running at the present time. This in turn enables it to host researchers and doctoral students from outside France on an annual basis. For INED Director Magda Tomasini, “the Institute’s collaboration with IPSS reflects our commitment to international research. … I am firmly convinced that population science research could not proceed without structural exchanges among research institutes throughout the world.”