Lasse Tarkiainen

Lasse Tarkiainen holds the title of Docent (equivalent to Adjunct Professor) at the University of Helsinki, Faculty of Social Sciences, with dual affiliations at the Helsinki Institute of Urban and Regional Studies (Urbaria) and the Helsinki Institute for Demography and Population Health. As Supervisor for the Doctoral Programme in Social Sciences, he mentors doctoral candidates while maintaining an active research profile evidenced by 61 publications spanning 2007-2025. His work leverages Finland's comprehensive national registers to investigate critical population health questions.

His research centers on sociological and demographic analyses of health inequalities, with particular emphasis on mortality patterns, life expectancy differentials, and social determinants of health across the lifespan. Key investigation areas include socioeconomic gradients in cardiovascular disease, alcohol-related health outcomes, mental healthcare utilization, and neighborhood effects on health. Methodologically, he specializes in register-based cohort studies, decomposition analyses of health inequalities, and longitudinal assessments of policy interventions using Finnish population data.

Recent publications (2023-2025) reveal persistent focus on income- and education-based health disparities, with significant contributions to understanding stagnation in female mortality trends, working life expectancy differentials, and the intergenerational transmission of health inequalities. His work increasingly examines mental health determinants through housing tenure and neighborhood contexts while maintaining strong engagement with cardiovascular epidemiology and alcohol policy evaluation.

Dr. Tarkiainen actively contributes to major collaborative initiatives including the BIRTHFAM consortium (2017-2023) examining family-level health determinants and the long-running Centre for Population, Health and Society (CPHS) since 2011. His international research engagement is demonstrated through academic visits to the University of Texas at Austin (2018-2019) and Karolinska Institute (2016), strengthening Nordic-European research networks in population health sciences.

Based at Porthania (Yliopistonkatu 3, Helsinki), he operates within interdisciplinary teams across both urban studies and demographic research institutes, where his expertise in register data analysis informs studies on urban health disparities, demographic transitions, and population aging in Nordic contexts.