Professor Josefina Natividad is Professor of Demography and Director of the Population Institute, University of the Philippines, Diliman. She has also been Professor of Sociology, UP, and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, UP Open University (1997-2001). She obtained her Doctor of Science (ScD) from Harvard University, 1993 and MA in Demography in 1985 from the University of the Philippines. She has held a number of major grants from WHO and Ford Foundation, and has been a Visiting Scholar at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe Universitat, Frankfurt. She is currently the recipient of an International Collaboration Award under the Australian Research Council funded discovery project on ‘The Demographic Consequences of Asian Disasters: Family Dynamics, Social Capital, and Migration Patterns.’ She has published extensively in many fields of demography and sociology, and has led major research projects in these fields, as well as being a consultant to several internationally funded projects, and technical advisor to the Philippine Department of Health. Her publications include (2008) ‘Family and Living Conditions of the Elderly in Southeast Asia: living arrangements as social support’ in Lee Hock Guan (ed) Aging in Southeast and East Asia: family, social protection and policy challenges (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies), and ‘Work, retirement and the gender divide in the Philippines’ in Theresa Devasahayam (ed) Gender and Aging: Southeast Asian Perspectives (Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies).