Luca Badolato is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Demography at the University of Oxford, where he is affiliated with the Department of Sociology and Nuffield College. His research examines the drivers and consequences of population change in both low-fertility contexts, particularly in the United States, and high-fertility contexts across sub-Saharan Africa. 

His work draws on reproductive rights and justice frameworks to illuminate the barriers that prevent individuals from achieving their fertility goals and how social inequalities shape reproductive experiences across the life course. At Oxford, Luca works with Dr Ewa Batyra on her ERC Starting Grant project DIVREP, examining within-country variation in reproductive experiences and its determinants across countries worldwide.

Prior to Oxford, Luca received a PhD in Sociology from The Ohio State University, where he was affiliated with the Institute for Population Research, and an MSc in Economic and Social Sciences from Bocconi University. His doctoral dissertation examined childlessness by combining demographic analyses of trends and patterns across low-fertility countries, computational analyses of motivations and experiences among childfree individuals using large-scale Reddit data, and longitudinal qualitative interviews with young adults in the United States about family formation and broader life plans.

Overall, Luca’s work contributes to ongoing debates on fertility decline by emphasising the needs, agency, and wellbeing of individuals. While acknowledging the consequences of population change, it focuses on fostering societies in which everyone can thrive and achieve their aspirations.

Research interests: Demography, fertility, family, reproductive health, life course analysis, demographic methods, computational social science