• Category: Ikerbasque Research Fellow & OPIK researcher
• Office: 4.126
• Email: tim.riffe@ehu.eus
• ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2673-4622
• Bluesky: @timriffe1.bsky.social
• You can consult my extended CV here

I’m a demographer, with a research focus on data, formal methods, mortality, population health, data visualization, and open science.

My PhD was in demography (2013, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona). I did a post doc doing data infrastructure programming and data curation at the Human Mortality Database (2012-2015, University of California, Berkeley). I was a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (2015-2021), where I remain a guest researcher. In 2020 I obtained one of the Research Fellow positions offered by the Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for Science, thanks to which I joined the Social Determinants of Health and Demographic Change-OPIK research group of the UPV/EHU in 2021.

My original work focuses on indirect methods for measuring health disparities, on a measurement framework for demographic life-course based measures of health, and on decomposition approaches to characterize life course disparities in health and longevity. In 2020 I started together with Enrique Acosta the COVerAGE Database, a global demographic database of COVID-19 cases, deaths, tests, and vaccinations, which has underpinned efforts to monitor the pandemic at the WHO, UN-DESA, UNICEF, and in the global health literature. I also serve on the WHO / UN-DESA Technical Advisory Group for COVID-19 Excess Mortality, where my primary contribution aims to characterize age patterns of COVID-19 direct mortality and all-cause excess mortality for 2020 and 2021, based on combining various global datasets. I am now adding a new focus on demography and health disparities in the Basque Country to my research portfolio.

In 2021 and 2022, I received two grants to support my research projects. For the first project, Multistate Healthy Life Expectancy Decomposition (MultiLED), I got funded as PI by La Caixa Foundation for the period 2022–2025. The second project for which I received funding, also as PI, Multidimensional Social Inequalities as Demographic Determinants: Mortality Inequalities, Excess Mortality, and Working Life Expectancy (WorkDeathIneq), was awarded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation for the period 2023–2027. 

I regularly teach short workshops on R programming, demography and demographic methods, and data visualization in various programs including BSSD, EDSD, PHDS, KOSTAT-UNPFA summer seminar on population, and other occasional workshops on request. 

My R-packages and reproducibility packs can be found on my GitHub. 

For more information, you can check my Ikerbasque webpage and my full CV.

2025

Magdalena Muszynska-Spielauer, Tim Riffe (2025). Life tables and life expectancy under current risk composition. Vienna Yearbook for Population Research. Details coming soon. See osf preprint in meantime (https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/rnbf4)

Margherita Moretti, Tim Riffe, and Angelo Lorenti (2025).  Multistate analysis and decomposition of disability-free life expectancy trends in Italy 2004-2019. Population Studies. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/00324728.2025.2475435 (Code Repository)

2024

Tim Riffe, Iñaki Permanyer, Rustam Tursun-zade, Magdalena Muszynska-Spielauer (2024). The joint distribution of years lived in good and poor health. Population Health Metrics.  Vol. 22 (1). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s12963-024-00354-w

Denise Feurer, Tim Riffe, Maxi Stella Kniffka, Enrique Acosta, Ben Armstrong, Malcolm N. Mistry, Dominic Royé, Masahiro Hashizume, Lina Madaniyazi, Aurelio Tobias, Pierre Masselot, Antonio Gasparrini, Francesco Sera (2024). Meteorological factors, population immunity and Covid-19 incidence – A global Multi-Country Multy-City study. Environmental Epidemiology Vol 8(6):p e338, December 2024. | DOI: https://doi.org/10.1097/EE9.0000000000000338

Magda Muszynska-Spielauer, Tim Riffe, Martin Spielauer (2024). Healthy lifespan statistics derived from cross-sectional prevalence data using Sullivan’s method are informative summary measures of population health. Comparative Population Studies. Vol. 49 DOI: https://doi.org/10.12765/CPoS-2024-03

2023

Erika Valero Alzaga, Ainhoa Elosegui de Pérdigo, Tim Riffe, Unai Martín Roncero (2023) Consumo de tabaco de liar en el País Vasco: magnitud, desigualdades socioeconómicas y evolución en el periodo 2013-2018. Rev Esp Salud Pública.v 97: 1 de diciembre e202312103 https://www.sanidad.gob.es/biblioPublic/publicaciones/recursos_propios/resp/revista_cdrom/VOL97/ORIGINALES/RS97C_202312103.pdf

Jessie Yeung, Monica Alexander, Tim Riffe (2023) Bayesian implementation of Rogers-Castro model migration schedules: An alternative technique for parameter estimation. Demographic Research. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2023.49.42

Tianyu Shen, Tim Riffe, Collin Payne, and Vladimir Canudas Romo (2023) Decomposition of Differences in Health Expectancies from Multistate Life Table. Demography. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/00703370-11058373

José M Aburto, Vanessa di Lego, Tim Riffe, Ridhi Kashyap, Alyson van Raalte, Orsola Torrisi. (2023) A global assessment of the impact of violence on lifetime uncertainty. Science Advances 9(5) DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.add9038

2022

Nikkil Sudharsanan, José Manuel Aburto, Tim Riffe, and Alyson van Raalte. (2022) Commentary: Large variation in the epidemiologic transition across countries: is it still valuable as a mortality theory? International Journal of Epidemiology. dyac107. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyac107

Pascal Geldsetzer, Trasius. Mukama,  Nadine Jawad, Tim Riffe, Angela Rogers, Nikkil Sudharsanan. (2022) Sex differences in the mortality rate for coronavirus disease 2019 compared to other causes of death. European Journal of Epidemiology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-022-00866-5

Aurelio Tobias, Tim Riffe, Diego Ramiro, Seri Trias-Llimos (2022) Forthcoming challenges for COVID-19 data collection. The Lancet Public Health. Correspondence. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(22)00029-9

Sergi Trias-Llimos, Usama Bilal, Manuel Franco, Amand Blanes, Tim Riffe (2022) Caídas en esperanza de vida en 2020 y seroprevalencia por SARS-CoV 2. Gaceta Sanitaria. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gaceta.2021.07.002

2021

Adrien Remund, Carlo Giovanni Camarda, Tim Riffe (2021) La surmortalité des jeunes adultes est-elle naturelle? (Is young adult excess mortality a natural phenomenon?). Population et Sociétés. Nr 590. French: https://www.ined.fr/fr/publications/editions/population-et-societes/la-surmortalite-des-jeunes-adultes-est-elle-naturelle/ English: https://www.ined.fr/fichier/s_rubrique/31532/590.population.societies.june.2021.young.adults.excess.mortality.en.pdf 

Héctor Pifarré i Arolas, Enrique Acosta, Guillem López-Casasnovas, Adeline Lo, Catia Nicodemo, Tim Riffe, and Mikko Myrskylä (2021) Years of life lost to COVID-19 in 81 countries. Scientific Reports. 11, 3504. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-83040-3 

Tim Riffe, Enrique Acosta and COVerAGE-DB team (2021) Data Resource Profile: A global demographic database of COVID-19 cases and deaths (COVerAGE-DB). International Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 50, Issue 2, April 2021, Pages 390–390f. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyab027 

2020

Sergi Trias-Llimos, Tim Riffe, & Usama Bilal (2020) Monitoring life expectancy levels during the COVID-19 pandemic: Example of the unequal impact in Spanish regions. PlosOne. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0241952

Sergi Trias-Llimos, Ainhoa Alustiza, Clara Prats, Aurelio Tobias, Tim Riffe (2020) The need for detailed COVID-19 data in Spain. The Lancet Public Health. Correspondence. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/S2468-2667(20)30234-6

Christian Dudel, Tim Riffe, Enrique Acosta, Alyson van Raalte, Cosmo Strozza, and Mikko Myrskylä (2020) Monitoring trends and differences in COVID-19 case fatality rates using decomposition methods: A demographic perspective. PlosOne. 15(9): e0238904. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0238904 

Tim Riffe, Marilia Nepomuceno, Ugofillipo Basellini (2020) Mortality modeling. Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging, Springer. https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-3-319-69892-2_556-1 

Tim Riffe and Jose Manuel Aburto (2020) Lexis fields. Demographic Research. V. 42, pp 713-726. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2020.42.24 

Jorge Cimentada, Sebastian Kluesener, Tim Riffe (2020) Exploring the Demographic History of Populations with Enhanced Lexis Surfaces. Demographic Research. V. 42, pp 149-164. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2020.42.6 

2015-2019

Rosie Seaman, Tim Riffe, Leyland Alastair, Frank Popham, and Alyson van Raalte (2019) The Increasing Lifespan Variation Gradient by Area-Level Deprivation: a Decomposition Analysis of Scotland 1981-2011. Social Science and Medicine.V. 230(June), pp 147-157. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.04.008

Rosie Seaman, Tim Riffe, and Hal Caswell (2019) The changing contribution of area level deprivation to total variance in age at death: a population based decomposition analysis. BMJ Open. 9(3). DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1136/ bmjopen-2018-024952 

Ian Stewart, René Flores, Tim Riffe, Ingmar Weber, and Emilio Zagheni (2019) Rock, Rap, or Reggaeton?: Assessing Mexican Immigrants’ Cultural Assimilation Using Facebook Data. Proceedings of the 2019 World Wide Web Conference. pp 3258—3264. DOI: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/3308558.3313409 

Jose Manuel Aburto, Tim Riffe, and Vladimir Canudas Romo (2018) Trends in avoidable mortality over the life course in Mexico, 1990-2015: A cross-sectional demographic analysis. BMJ Open. 8(7). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmjopen-2018-022350

Adrien Remund, Carlo Giovanni Camarda, and Tim Riffe (2018) A cause-of-death decomposition of the young adult excess mortality. Demography V. 55(3), pp 957-978. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0680-9

Tim Riffe, Jonas Schöley, and Francisco Villavicencio A unified framework of demographic time. (2017) Genus. 73(7) . DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/s41118-017-0024-4 

Tim Riffe, Pil H. Chung, Jeroen Spijker, and John MacInnes Time-to-death patterns in markers of age and dependency (2016) Vienna Yearbook of Population Research 2016. v14. pp 229-254. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1553/populationyearbook2016s229. Previously posted as MPIDR Working Paper WP-2015-008.

Francisco Villavicencio and Tim Riffe (2016) Symmetries between life lived and left in finite stationary populations, Demographic Research. V. 34, pp 381-398. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2016.35.14

Magali Barbieri,  John R Wilmoth, Vladimir M. Shkolnikov, Dana Glei, Domantas Jasilionis, Dmitri Jdanov, Tim Riffe, Pavel Grigoriev, and Celeste Winant (2015) Data Resource Profile: The Human Mortality Database (HMD) International Journal of Epidemiology 44(5) pp 1549–1556. DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyv105 

Tim Riffe (2015) The force of mortality by life lived is the force of increment by life left in stationary populations, Demographic Research. V. 32, pp 827-834. DOI:  https://doi.org/10.4054/DemRes.2015.32.29

2025, August 27-29 (forthcoming): title TBD, Climbing Mortality Models workshop: Reloaded. Misurina, Italy.

2025, April 28-29: (forthcoming): An indirect method to infer multistate transitions, HEALIN project closing workshop, CED, Bellaterra, Spain.

2025, March 13: (forthcoming): An indirect method to infer multistate transitions, Mortality, Health and Epidemiology Unit, INED, Paris, France.

2025, Jan 28: The limits of Sullivan inputs, and what to do about them, Laboratory on Longevity and Ageing (LoLA) network, online.

2023, Oct 16: Time perspectives influence narratives on population structure and health, Laboratory on Longevity and Ageing (LoLA) network, online.

2023, Oct 4: Age patterns of excess mortality due to Covid-19. WHO RGHS Task Force 2 on all-cause mortality and life table estimation, online.

2023, Sept 28: Uncertainty in healthy life years, CPoP Seminar Series, Odense, Denmark

2023, Sept 26: Uncertainty in healthy life years, MPIDR Population Health Lab Talk, Rostock, Germany.

2023, June 7: presentation “Reproducible Research: A practical workflow for publicly available data” Royal Statistical Society Glasgow Local Group. Online seminar.

2023, March 7: presentation “Uncertainty in healthy life years” Population and Health Research Group Seminar Series University of St. Andrews, UK.

2022, September 29: opening keynote. “Reflections on health and mortality research”. Workshop of the EAPS Health, Morbidity, and Mortality Working Group Charles University, Prague. 

2022, August 30-Sept 2:  presentation “Decomposing differences in multistate indices: Compositional reflections” Climbing Mortality Models workshop, Misurina, Italy

2022, June 24: “Reproducible Open Science” Summer Institute in Computational Social Science (SICSS). Covenant University, Nigeria (online)

2022, June 16-17: 6th HMD Symposium, Paris, France “Inferring a mortality gradient from compositional change”

2021, Dec 3: presentation “Coding Decompositions” Formal Demography Working Group

2021, Nov 11: seminar “Decomposing differences in multistate indices” Centre for Demographic Studies, Barcelona, Spain

2021, Oct 12:  opening plenary “herramientas de la demografía nocturna” XVI Jornadas Argentina de Estudios de Población/ III Congreso Internacional de Población del Cono Sur (online)

2021, Sept 22:  Cidacs/Fiocruz webinar on overcoming measurement challenges with mortality data (Como superar os desafios de mensuração da mortalidade?) “Mortality data quality with DemoTools” (online)

2021, July 12: SCOR Deep Talk “COVerAGE*: how a group of researchers from around the globe got together to create the international database on COVID by age-band” SCOR Global Life, Paris, France (online)