I am a Research Associate at the Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science and a Non-Stipendiary Fellow of Nuffield College, University of Oxford. My research examines the interplay between demographic processes and socio-economic outcomes — primarily how parenthood, gender, and fertility shape labour-market outcomes and health — drawing on large-scale linked administrative data.

My project LMCM (Labour Market Consequences of Motherhood) made German and French registry data comparable for the first time, yielding new evidence on how the cost of motherhood differs across the two countries' labour markets. I am now extending this approach to further countries.

My other interests span scientometrics, where I study how research comes to matter beyond academia; digital demography, where I draw on new data sources to measure discrimination; and historical demography, including work on the demographic consequences of the 1918 influenza pandemic. I am also a superforecaster with the Good Judgment Project, and interested in bringing forecasting methods to demographic research.

Research interests

Projects & visual stories

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Publications

Journal Articles

1. 8.Stratification of post-birth labour supply in a high- and low-maternal employment regime
   Andreas Filser, Pascal Achard, Corinna Frodermann, Dana Müller, Sander Wagner (corresponding author)
   Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, Vol. 102, 2026
2. 7.The European Parenting Leave Policies (EPLP) Dataset: Leave duration entitlements for 21 countries from 1970 to 2024
   Sonja Spitzer et al.
   Demographic Research, Vol. 54, 2026, pp. 987–1008
3. 6.Gender Inequalities and Motherhood Penalties across French and German Local Labor Markets
   Sander Wagner, Andreas Filser, Pascal Achard & Inga Amend
   Socius, Vol. 11, 2025
4. 5.The Economic Penalty of Terrorism: Increase in Discrimination Against Arabs and Muslims after Paris Attacks
   Sander Wagner & Ivaylo D. Petev
   Socius, Vol. 10, 2024
5. 4.Projecting the Long-term Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on U.S. Population Structure
   Sander Wagner, Andrea Tilstra, Antonino Polizzi & Evelina T. Akimova
   Nature Communications, Vol. 15, 2024, Article no. 2409
6. 3.The Wealth of Parents: Trends Over Time in Assortative Mating Based on Parental Wealth
   Sander Wagner, Diederik Boertien & Mette Gortz
   Demography, Vol. 57, 2020, pp. 1809–1831
7. 2.Asymmetries in the opportunity structure: Intergenerational mobility trends in Europe
   Sander Wagner & G. Esping-Andersen
   Research in Social Stratification and Mobility, Vol. 30(4), 2012, pp. 473–487
8. 1.Child care and school performance in Denmark and the United States
   G. Esping-Andersen, I. Garfinkel, W. Han, K. Magnuson, S. Wagner & Jane Waldfogel
   Children and Youth Services Review, Vol. 34(3), 2012, pp. 576–589

Reports

1. 1.The SHAPE of Research Impact
   Sander Wagner et al. — The British Academy, 2024

Chapters in Edited Volumes

1. 1.The role of social institutions in inter-generational mobility
   G. Esping-Andersen, Brian Nolan, Christopher Whelan & Sander Wagner
   In R. Erikson, M. Jäntti & T. Smeeding (eds.), Persistence, Privilege, and Parenting, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 2010

Articles under Review

1. 1.Firm-specific Motherhood Penalties
   Sander Wagner & Pascal Achard
   Submitted to Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
2. 2.Harmonizing French and German administrative data on maternal employment: A practical guide how to create comparable data sets from DADS-EDP and SIAB
   Sander Wagner, Andreas Filser, Pascal Achard, Inga Marie Amend, Corinna Frodermann & Ida Gaede
   Accepted at Journal for Labour Market Research

Work in Progress

1. 1.Gender and the production of societal impact in science
   Sander Wagner, Charles Rahal & Melinda Mills
2. 2.Twinstruments — Revisiting the Twin Approach to Estimating the Relationship between Fertility and Maternal Labor Market Outcomes
   Sander Wagner & Mette Goertz
3. 3.Two Sides of the Same Market: Gender and Ethnoracial Discrimination against Hosts and Guests in the Sharing Economy
   Sander Wagner & Ivaylo Petev
4. 4.A LLM-based Taxonomy to Describe the Impact of UK Sciences
   Sander Wagner, Charles Rahal & Melinda Mills
5. 5.Pandemics, Public Health Interventions and Fertility: Evidence from the 1918 Influenza
   Sander Wagner, Felix Tropf, Nicolo Cavalli & Melinda Mills
6. 6.The Evolution of Within- and Cross-Country Differences in the Transition to Adulthood: A New Perspective
   Sander Wagner & Olivier Thevenon

Teaching

2024–25

Demography & Population tutorials (undergraduate) · University of Oxford

2026

Co-organiser, Workshop on Gender, Family, and Work Inequalities · Nuffield College, Oxford

2023

Workshop on Superforecasting · European University Institute

2014–20

Econometrics; Controversies in Inequality and Stratification; Introductory Readings in Sociology; Sociology of the Family; applied statistics and research-internship supervision · ENSAE, Paris

2014

Advanced Statistics (Masters) · Sciences Po

2012

Stata Programming (faculty course) · Universitat Pompeu Fabra

A full teaching record is available in my CV.

Contact

Leverhulme Centre for Demographic Science
Nuffield Department of Population Health, University of Oxford
42–43 Park End St, Oxford OX1 1JD, UK
sander.wagner@demography.ox.ac.uk