INED studies every issue relating to population and development that is debated in the United Nations. It has also been contributing to the Commission for population and development's work, and to its annual report on themes the commission has chosen beforehand (immigration in 2006) among other things.

INED, just like the main research institutes in European demography, contributes to the Generations and Gender project (GGP), launched by the population Division of the United Nations in 2000. This project is based on the methodology already developed by the "fertility-family" surveys conducted in the 1990s in approximately 20 developed countries, surveys that had already been coordinated by the UN. GGP is focused on the study of family construction and intergenerational relationships.

Several UN agencies are currently financing INED work. Cases in point are the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) or the UNAIDS in Africa. With the University of Moscow and the University of Strasbourg, INED collects data on medical causes of death since 1950 for the WHO (Mortality Data-base).