Govert Bijwaard (1969) is employed at Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI). He studied econometrics at Groningen University and at Brown University. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Free University of Amsterdam in June 2001. He has worked as senior researcher at NYFER and SEOR, two applied research institutes in the Netherlands and as a Postdoc at Erasmus University Rotterdam. He has published in journals such as Journal of Econometrics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Business & Economic Statistics and Journal of Population Economics. His current research interests include migration dynamics (return migration in particular), educational gradient in health and mortality, and other applications of duration analysis.

He joined IZA as a Research Fellow in June 2007.