John Bongaarts is a Population Council vice president and Distinguished Scholar. He has worked at the Population Council since 1973. His research focuses on a variety of population issues, including the determinants of fertility, population–environment relationships, the demographic impact of the AIDS epidemic, population aging, and population policy options in the developing world.

Bongaarts is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, and the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars. Some of the awards that he has received include the Robert J. Lapham Award and the Mindel Sheps Award from the Population Association of America and the Research Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health. He served as chairman of the Panel on Population Projections of the National Academy of Sciences. Bongaarts has a master's degree from the Eindhoven Institute of Technology, Netherlands, and a Ph.D. in physiology and biomedical engineering from the University of Illinois.