Young Author’s Prize 2015

Young Author’s Prize 2015 For this first edition of the Young Author’s prize, set to become an annual event, the jury was chaired by Marianne Kempeneers (Université de Montréal). Its other members were Nico Kielman (University of Oslo), Emmanuelle Cambois (INED, Paris), Bruno Schoumaker (Université catholique de Louvain), and Olivia Samuel (Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines). The journal editors would like to dedicate the 2015 prize to Valeria Solesin, a PhD student in demography at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, hosted at INED, who lost her life in the Paris terrorist attacks on 13 November 2015. A word from the jury president A total of 26 papers entered this year’s competition for the Young Author’s Prize organized by Population. The submitted texts were very varied and of excellent quality, reflecting the dynamism and future promise of a new international generation of demographers. Their authors came from 11 countries on four continents –Europe, Africa, Asia and North America– and 11 articles were in English and 15 in French. Many of the research topics concerned the traditional themes of demography (fertility, nuptiality, mortality and migration) and applied a variety of approaches and methods, sometimes based on a combination of both quantitative and qualitative data. But the fields of interest were very broad, with some articles focusing on social, gender and ethnic inequalities linked to education, employment or housing. Given the diversity and quality of the competition entries, it was difficult to make a final choice. Alongside the winner, 13 other authors were invited to submit a revised version of their paper to the Population Editorial Board. This first edition of the Young Author’s Prize was organized as follows. Out of the 26 papers received, four were eliminated in a preliminary selection process because they were outside the scope of the journal or of inadequate scientific quality. Each of the remaining 22 articles was anonymized and sent to two external reviewers. The jury members then examined all the papers and reviewers’ reports (on a totally anonymous basis). The winner was selected at a final meeting on 9 February 2016. As mentioned above, the discussions  185 concerned not only the prizewinner, but also the selection of authors who would be invited to resubmit their revised paper to the Population Editorial Board. We wish to congratulate the winner, Emanuela Struffolino, for her article entitled “Self-reported health among lone mothers: do employment and education matter?” co-authored by Laura Bernardi and Marieke Voorpostel. Emanuela Struffolino currently holds a postdoctoral position at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center. Her article examines the health of lone mothers in Switzerland, a country where policies to favour the work-life balance are limited. It compares the self-reported health of these mothers with that of women in a couple, taking account of possible interactions with employment status and educational level, two other factors that also affect health. This article, which draws upon data from the Swiss Household Panel over the period 1999-2011, makes an original contribution to the field of family and women’s employment and, more especially, to the debate on the links between lone parenthood, socioeconomic status and health. In view of the competition’s success, Population has decided to organize a new competition in 2016, and warmly welcomes entries from young authors working on demographic research questions. I hope you will enjoy reading this article by the 2015 prizewinner. Marianne Kempeneers M. Kempeneers 186 ...