Biography:
Dowell Myers is a professor of policy, planning, and demography in the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy. His Ph.D. is from M.I.T. (urban planning). He has been an advisor to the Bureau of the Census and authored the widely referenced work on census analysis, Analysis with Local Census Data: Portraits of Change (Academic Press, 1992). His demographic work has included substantial emphasis on immigration, and his 2007 book Immigrants and Boomers: Forging a New Social Contract for the Future of America is widely recognized. Myers also served on the National Academy of Sciences study panel on the Economic and Fiscal Impacts of Immigration (2013-16). Research projects have focused on public narratives about immigration, aging, and taxation, projections of generational change, and the upward mobility of immigrants the longer they reside in the U.S. Most recently, he has concentrated on reasons for the mounting housing shortages that plague recent cohorts and raise the cost of living for all. This also includes public perceptions and reactions to demographic change as part of the problem analysis
“Talking Demographics: Immigration, Audience, and Narratives”
Abstract:
Demographic narratives express interpretations and conclusions drawn from quantitative analysis of demographic change. Whereas professional demographers focus on estimation of change and statistical explanation, the matter of public explanation and extraction of meaning is often left to others, traditionally journalists in the news media, but increasingly expanded to popular or political activists using social media. Reasons why professional demographers should take more responsibility and care for their public facing interpretations are demonstrated through two case examples. The first asks why it might appear from net changes that immigrants are “taking all the jobs” and “replacing” white Americans (while gross flows tell different stories). The second recounts difficulties the Census Bureau has encountered with their narratives in reports and press releases that accompany their population projections, which include racial changes and trends in future immigration. How might stronger awareness of audience and purpose lead to less misleading and more constructive demographic narratives?