The Oxford Institute of Population Ageing was established in 1998. Based on the US Population Center, it was funded by a grant from the National Institute of Health (National Institute on Aging - NIA) to establish the UK's first population centre on the demography and economics of ageing populations. It achieved Institute status in 2001.

The aim is to undertake research into the implications of population change. A multi-disciplinary group with demography as main disciplinary focus, and links into all four University Divisions. Their researchers work in Africa, Latin America, Asia and Europe, and they run the Population Networks AFRAN (Africa) LARNA (Latin America) EAST (Central and Eastern Europe).