Sonja
Spitzer

Demography & Economics

I am a researcher at the Vienna Institute of Demography, lecturer at the University of Vienna, and affiliated with the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Japan and the Karolinska Institutet, Sweden. I also serve as an editor for the Vienna Yearbook of Population Research and was previously a visiting scholar at the University of Chicago.

My research aims at understanding the causes behind health and earnings disparities across gender and socioeconomic groups. Using demographic and microeconomic perspectives, I investigate how human capital, life events, and labour market outcomes interact across the life course and shape inequalities in survival. I am also working on improved methods to measure health and ageing across populations and lead the European Parenting Leave Policies Dataset.

Get in touch if you would like to discuss your work or mine!

Research Projects

Here is a selection of my ongoing research projects. For a full list of ongoing and past projects, have a look at my CV.

2024 - 2026

Skill loss during parental leave and its role for gender disparities in earnings (Skill-PAL)

The Skill-PAL project examines human capital loss around childbirth and during child-related career interruptions, using administrative data from Austria and Sweden. As part of this project, I coordinate the European Parenting Leave Policies (EPLP) Dataset, which provides harmonised data on parenting leave policies for 21 European countries from 1970 to 2024.

Grant: Data:Research:Austria, Austria
PI: Sonja Spitzer; Co-Author of the proposal: Claudia Reiter

2024 - 2026

Life is about timing: Health shocks and socioeconomic inequality across the life cycle

Using novel administrative data from Austria and Japan, this project examines cancer as a key health shock to explore how socio-economic disparities shape health and labor market outcomes. The goal is to inform policies that promote equity, reduce the long-term impact of health shocks, and support the financial sustainability of public institutions in aging societies.

Grant: COI Next Grant, Japan
PI: Yuliya Kulikova; Co-Authors of the proposal: Sonja Spitzer, Vanessa di Lego, and Michael Kuhn

Peer-reviewed publications

Below is a selection of my publications. For policy reports, edited special issues, working papers, and other publications, have a look at my CV.

15. Renner A.-T., Shaikh M. and Spitzer S. (2025): Absence from work and lifetime smoking behavior: Evidence from European maternal leave policies. The Journal of Health Economics

14. Greulich A. and Spitzer S. (2025): The cost of children. In: Zimmermann K. F. (Ed.), Handbook of Labor, Human Resources and Population Economics. Springer International Publishing

13. Spitzer S. and Reiter C. (2024): Demographic change, health care, and long-term care. In: Renner A.-T., Getzner M. and Plank L. (Eds.), Handbook of Social Infrastructure. Edward Elgar Publishing

12. Di Lego V., Spitzer S. and Lazarevic P. (2024): Mismatches in Health: A Global Analysis of Discrepancies Between Self-Reported and Tested Mobility and Cognition. Comparative Population Studies

11. Spitzer S. and Shaikh M. (2022): Health misperception and healthcare utilisation among older Europeans. The Journal of the Economics of Ageing

10. Spitzer S., Shaikh M. and Weber D. (2022): Older Europeans’ health perception and their adaptive behavior during the COVID-19 pandemic. European Journal of Public Health

9. Spitzer S., Di Lego V., Kuhn M., Roth C. and Berger C. (2022): Socio-economic environment and survival in patients after ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction (STEMI): A longitudinal study for the City of Vienna. BMJ Open

8. Spitzer S., Greulich A. and Hammer B. (2022): The subjective cost of young children: A European comparison. Social Indicator Research

7. Scherbov S., Spitzer S. and Steiber N. (2022): Thresholds for clinical practice that directly link handgrip strength to remaining years of life: Estimates based on longitudinal observational data. BMJ Open

6. Lutz W., Striessnig E., Dimitrova A., Ghislandi S., Lijadi A., Reiter C., Spitzer S. and Yildiz D. (2021): Years of good life is a well-being indicator designed to serve research on sustainability. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS

5. Hammer B., Spitzer S. and Prskawetz A. (2021): Age-specific income trends in Europe: The role of employment, wages and social transfers. Social Indicator Research

4. Spitzer S. (2020): Biases in health expectancies due to educational differences in survey participation of older Europeans: It’s worth weighting for. The European Journal of Health Economics

3. Hammer H., Spitzer S., Vargha L. and Istenic T. (2020): The gender dimension of intergenerational transfers in Europe. The Journal of the Economics of Ageing

2. Reiter C. and Spitzer S. (2020): Wellbeing in Europe: Decompositions by country and gender for the population 50+. Vienna Yearbook of Population Research

1. Spitzer S. and Weber D. (2019): Reporting biases in self-assessed physical and cognitive health status of older Europeans. PLOS ONE

Media

Newspaper articles, interviews, and videos

My research has been covered by media outlets around the world, including in Austria, the US, the UK, India, and Argentina. Below is a selection of newspaper articles, interviews, radio programmes, podcasts, and videos that feature my work.