John F. May

John F. May, a US and Belgian national, is a specialist of population policies with a worldwide scope and with a particular interest in sub-Saharan African and Southeast Asia. During his international career, he was a Lead Demographer at the World Bank for 15 years and has worked before for the United Nations in Haiti and New Caledonia, as well as for the Futures Group International, a US consulting firm specializing in demographic modeling and policy. Recently, he spent also 1 year at the Center for Global Development (CGD) and 5 years at the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), both in Washington, DC. Overall, he has worked around the world for most international agencies, including inter alia the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP). He has a BA in Modern History (1973), a MA in demography (1985), which were both earned at the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. He received his PhD summa cum laude from the University of Paris-V (Sorbonne) in 1996. He has published "World Population Policies: Their Origin, Evolution, and Impact" (Springer, 2012), which has received the Population Institute 2012 Global Media Award for best book in population. His most recent book is "Africa's Population: In Search of a Demographic Dividend" (Springer, 2017), which he co-edited with Dr. Hans Groth, Chairman of the Board of the World Demography & Ageing Forum (WDA Forum) in St. Gallen, Switzerland.