John Haskey

Personal Info

John Haskey, a statistician/demographer, was until recently head of the Family Demography Unit within the Population and Demography Division of the Office for National Statistics. His published statistical studies and analyses have been on the subjects of: marriage; divorce; cohabitation; separation; adoption; families - including one-parent families and stepfamilies - as well as households, and relationships, including kin relationships. He has also worked on, and written about, the minority ethnic populations, estimating their numbers and characteristics and also editing and contributing to a volume examining the feasibility of making projections of the minority ethnic populations.

He has written especially on marriage, divorce and cohabitation, and also on one-parent families - having derived the official Government estimates of their number from the mid-1980s until 2002. One particular interest is the effect of changes in legislation or regulations on subsequent demographic behaviour. Examples include evaluating the effects of different divorce law reform and changing regulations on marriage. John is interested in the family law aspects of marriage, divorce, cohabitation and adoption, and how quantitative analyses can assist and inform the different requirements of family law. He has been involved with the work of the Law Commission on proposals for reform of the law on divorce and cohabitation, and has also advised Select Committees and MPs in Parliament on trends and developments in a variety of demographic subjects

Currently his interest is focused on cohabitation and Living Apart Together, LAT, which have formed the subject of his most recent two publications. He has contributed chapters and forewords to a number of books and entries to encyclopedias on demographic subjects, including family policy. John, a past President of the British Society for Population Studies, holds a Visiting Senior Research Fellowship at the Department of Social Policy and Social Work at the University of Oxford.