Rate My Professor Pekka Martikainen

Pekka Martikainen is Professor of Demography in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki, where he is affiliated with the Helsinki Institute for Demography and Population Health. He previously served as Head of the Population Research Unit in the Department of Social Research and is co-director of the Max Planck–University of Helsinki Center for Social Inequalities in Population Health. His academic interests lie in demography and sociology, with a primary focus on social inequalities in population health, mortality differences across socioeconomic groups, health outcomes over the life course, and the interplay of social, genetic, and environmental factors. Martikainen employs large-scale longitudinal register data from Finland, combined with genetic and survey information, to conduct rigorous population-based studies that elucidate causal mechanisms underlying health disparities.

Martikainen's career at the University of Helsinki has been marked by leadership in doctoral training, having supervised or co-supervised 45 doctoral theses and directed doctoral programs in social sciences. He has earned recognition through awards including the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Invitation Fellowship in 2001 and a nomination as Research Affiliate at the Population Studies Center, University of Pennsylvania in 2010. In 2021, he received a €2.5 million European Research Council Advanced Grant for the project 'Social inequalities in population health: integrating evidence from longitudinal, family-based and genetically informed data' (2021–2026), which examines long-term changes in health inequalities, intergenerational effects, social-genetic interactions, and international comparisons. His research has illuminated the roles of alcohol consumption, smoking, unemployment, and family background in mortality inequalities. With over 600 publications, key works include 'Heterogeneous associations of polygenic indices of 35 traits with mortality: a register-linked population-based follow-up study' (Lahtinen et al., 2026, eLife), 'Age at First Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Diagnosis and Educational Outcomes' (Volotinen et al., 2026, JAMA Psychiatry), 'Institutionalization of older adults after the death of a spouse' (Nihtilä & Martikainen, 2008), and 'A register-based study on excess suicide mortality among unemployed men and women during the recession' (Mäki & Martikainen, 2012). Martikainen has contributed as editor of research journals and held numerous positions in national and international committees, review panels, and organizations, enhancing the field's methodological and theoretical frameworks.