California Center for Population Research

Fernando Riosmena, University of Colorado
2018-03-07 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
“A re-appraisal of thinking on and the empirical evaluation of migration theories”
Abstract: Over the last quarter Century, there has been considerable efforts to systematize knowledge on and empirically test the drivers of population mobility around a set of eight theories that either explain the initiation or continuation of international labor migration flows. In this presentation, I provide a reflection aimed at furthering theoretical development and empirical testing of these theories. I do so by: (1) providing more specific guidance on how the different theories’ overlapping scales of influence interrelate more specifically than examined in prior work; (2) arguing for a more complete formulation of some of these theories to better explain contemporary immigration flows; and (3) discussing whether/how these theories can help bridge the understanding of the “drivers” of internal vs. international migration, and of labor vs. other kinds of mobility, including some forms of forced displacement. Throughout, I also discuss how the quantitative testing of these theories has fallen into pitfalls of both thinking measurement, which have likely led to a misattribution of the relative importance of some theories, suggesting some refinements on the empirical validation of and the more general use of these theories in guiding empirical analysis going forward.
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Co-sponsored with the Center for the Study of International Migration and the Center for Mexican Studies
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David Card, UC Berkeley
2018-03-14 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
“The Health Effects of Cesarean Delivery for Low-Risk First Births”
Abstract: Cesarean delivery for low-risk pregnancies is generally associated with worse health outcomes for infants and mothers. The interpretation of this correlation, however, is confounded by potential selectivity in the choice of birth mode. We use birth records from California, merged with hospital and emergency department (ED) visits for infants and mothers in the year after birth, to study the casual health effects of cesarean delivery for low-risk first births. Building on McClellan, McNeil, and Newhouse (1994), we use the relative distance from a mother’s home to hospitals with high and low c-section rates as an instrument for c-section. We show that relative distance is a strong predictor of c-section but is orthogonal to many observed risk factors, including birth weight and indicators of prenatal care. Our IV estimates imply that cesarean delivery causes a relatively large increase in ED visits of the infant, mainly due to acute respiratory conditions. We find no significant effects on mothers’ hospitalizations or ED use after birth, or on subsequent fertility, but we find a ripple effect on second birth outcomes arising from the high likelihood of repeat c-section. Offsetting these morbidity effects, we find that delivery at a high c-section hospital leads to a significant reduction in infant mortality, driven by lower death rates for newborns with high rates of pre-determined risk factors.
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CEGA-EASST Scholars Visit from East Africa
2018-03-16 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
On Friday, March 16, UCLA is hosting three CEGA-EASST scholars from East Africa. EASST invites East African researchers to apply for a 4-month fellowship at UC Berkeley to build skills in rigorous social science research and impact evaluation-these are the fellows who won this fellowship. Each scholar will present on the following topics from 12:00-1:30PM in Public Affairs building room 4240. Lunch will be served. They will be visiting all day so let us know if you would like to meet with any of them individually. Hope you can join us. Register Here

Samuel Muhula: Monitoring, Evaluation and Research Manager at Amref Health Africa, from Kenya
“Social Dynamics and HIV Treatment Retention: Can Non-monetary Incentives and Facility-Based Psychosocial Support Improve Patients’ Retention in the Early Stages of HIV Care?”
Suboptimal human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) treatment retention has profound impacts on morbidity and mortality among HIV positive participants. Monetary incentives and psychosocial support have been shown to be effective in various aspects of HIV control and may improve retention of participants in the early stages of HIV continuum of care. This two-armed randomized control trial evaluates the effectiveness of social dynamics involving non-monetary incentives and facility-based psychosocial support for HIV treatment on retention in the first six months of antiretroviral therapy (ART). The control group will receive standard care while the intervention group will receive standard care and the treatment which includes non-monetary incentives and participants enrolled into psychosocial support groups. The study will be implemented in Kibera informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya.

Danish Us Salam: Senior Research Associate at BRAC Uganda, from Pakistan
“Play & Learn – Using Intramural Sports to tackle Health and Educational Outcomes in Sierra Leone”
Political and economic pressures on education systems to improve standardized test scores have had the unintended consequence of reducing or eliminating physical education curricula and thus students’ opportunities for physical activity. Extensive scientific evidence demonstrates that regular physical activity promotes growth and development in youth and has multiple benefits for physical, mental and cognitive health whereas the lack of it can be detrimental to optimizing child health and development. I propose an experiment to test whether introducing a sport’s curriculum in under-resourced schools can drive health and educational outcomes among primary and secondary school students. More specifically, I’m interested in the impact of supervised sports participation and school-sport performance-linked cash benefits in curbing teacher absenteeism, teacher effort and improving student health and educational status across gender, class level and socio-economic status.

Patrick Okello: Research Fellow at BRAC Uganda, from Uganda
“The Unemployment Problem and the Informal Economy: Can Evaluative Conditioning increase Labor Market Engagement?”
Youth unemployment presents a major challenge in Uganda and is estimated to be as high as 64%. Only 30% of the labor force is engaged in the formal sector as it cannot absorb the large numbers entering the labor market annually. The informal sector, however, contributes considerably to the national GDP. There is anecdotical evidence that the reluctance to engage in the informal sector is attitudinal rather than structural, partly as a result of asymmetrical information flows between the informal sector and job seekers. Therefore, job seekers delay employment in expectation of a higher reservation wage attainable from a job in the formal sector. By exposing different groups to stimuli to reshape their negative opinions about self-employment, we query whether this could be a cost-effective way to promote labor force participation rates.

Andrew Oswald, University of Warwick
2018-04-04 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
“The Midlife Crisis in Humans and Other Animals”
Abstract: The talk will discuss the concept of the midlife crisis. It will examine international evidence on happiness, mental health, suicide, antidepressant consumption, sleep, and so on. Not all the data will be on human beings. The talk will say something about where we are scientifically, and what we need to understand next. Plenty of time will be left for open discussion.
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*Co-Sponsored with Public Policy and Applied Social Science Seminar (PPASS)

Emmanuel Saez, UC Berkeley
2018-04-11 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
“Inequality around the World: Evidence and Implications”
Abstract: The lecture will present new evidence on global inequality and growth since 1980 using the World and Wealth Income Database. We combine data across countries in a homogeneous way to analyze world inequality. Global inequality has increased since 1980 in spite of fast growth in large emerging countries. We plot the curve of cumulated growth from 1980 to 2016 for each percentile of the global distribution of income per adult. This curve has an elephant shape as growth rates have been particularly high around the median (due to growth in China and India), growth rates have been low for the middle classes of advanced economies, and growth rates have been explosive for the global top income earners. We estimate the future evolution of global inequality between now and 2050 combining projected macro growth rates and within country inequality evolution based on past trends.
Podcast Here
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*Co-sponsored with the Department of Economics and Anderson School of Management and Public Policy and Applied Social Science Seminar (PPASS)

CCPR 2018 PAA Practice Session
2018-04-18 12:00 - 13:30 | 4240 Public Affairs Bldg
Please join us to hear our residents interesting research and give feedback for their upcoming PAA presentations.
Presenters:

Elior Cohen, “The impact of skilled immigration on innovation in the Age of Mass Migration”
Sara Johnsen, “Continuity and Change in Contraceptive Female Sterilization in the United States, 1982 – 2015”
Wookun Kim, “Does Pro-Natalist Cash Transfer Work? Evidence from Local Programs in South Korea”
Ravaris Moore, “The Effects of Exposure to Community Gun-Violence on the High School Dropout Rates of California Public School Students”

Bruce Western, Harvard University and Columbia University
2018-05-02 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
“Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison”
Abstract: This talk will address my new book, Homeward: Life in the Year After Prison. The book tells the stories of the men and women I met through the Boston Reentry Study, a series of interviews my research team and I conducted with people leaving prison for neighborhoods around Boston. We were trying to understand what happens when people return to a community, and the challenges faced by them and their families. How did they look for work and housing? How did they manage their addictions or mental illness, and why did some return to incarceration? In trying to answer these questions, I hoped to bear witness to the lives held captive in America’s experiment with mass incarceration. The research showed that imprisonment is followed by deep poverty, in which unemployment is widespread and survival is assisted only by government programs and family support. While earlier studies have focused on the stigma of a criminal record, the men and women of Boston also struggled greatly with human frailty — mental illness, addiction, and physical disability — that threatened success after incarceration and impaired the effectiveness of programs. They had experienced serious violence, often as perpetrators, but just as frequently as victims and witnesses, and often since early childhood. Under these conditions, freedom after prison was not a status granted by release, but something attained gradually. Becoming free was a process of social integration where one had to find one’s place with kin and community.
More on Prof. Western
*Co-sponsored with the California Policy Lab

Susan Cassels, UC Santa Barbara
2018-05-09 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
“Self-selection or enabling environments: What predicts the association between short-term mobility and sexual behavior?”
Abstract: Short-term mobility is often associated with increased risk behavior. For example, mobile individuals often have higher rates of sexual risk behavior compared to non-mobile individuals, but the reasons why are not clear. Using monthly retrospective panel data from Ghana, we test whether short-term mobility is associated with differences in total and unprotected sex acts, and whether the association is due to enabling, selection, or influential reasons. In other words, do mobile individuals express higher levels of risk due to an environment that enables that risk? Alternatively, mobile individuals may be selected on some trait that predicts less aversion to risk. Men who were mobile in a given month had more sex acts compared to non-mobile men. Regardless of short-term mobility in a given month, both men and women who were mobile in future months had more sex acts compared to individuals not mobile in future months. Our findings support the hypothesis that both men and women who are mobile are positively selected on sexual risk behavior. The enabling hypothesis, that the act of being mobile enables sexual risk behavior, was only supported for men.
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Fabian Pfeffer, University of Michigan: Multigenerational Cycles of Poverty?
2018-05-14 15:00 - 16:30 | Haines 279
Fabian Pfeffer, University of Michigan
Multigenerational Cycles of Poverty?
Monday May 14th, 3:00 pm- 4:30pm, Haines 279
*co-sponsored with the Stratification, Inequality and Mobility Working Group and the Family Working Group

Sarah Baird, George Washington University
2018-05-16 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
“When the Money Runs Out: Do Cash Transfers Have Sustained Effects on Human Capital Accumulation?”
Abstract: The five-year evaluation of a cash transfer program targeted to young women points to both the promise and limitations of cash transfers for persistent welfare gains. Conditional cash transfers produced sustained improvements in education and fertility for initially out-of-school females, but caused no gains in other outcomes. Significant declines in HIV prevalence, pregnancy and early marriage observed during the program among recipients of unconditional cash transfers (UCTs) evaporated quickly after the cessation of support. However, children born to UCT beneficiaries during the program had significantly higher height-for-age z-scores at follow-up pointing to the potential importance of cash during critical periods.
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Ethnic/Racial Characteristics and Inequality of Opportunity in Mexico
2018-05-17 12:30 - 14:30 | Haines 279
More Information: http://www.international.ucla.edu/lai/event/13239#.WuoL1C7waUl
Household surveys in Mexico include only limited information on race and ethnicity. The identification of racial and ethnic characteristics beyond membership to indigenous populations has been historically a difficult topic, in part because it defies the “mestizo” ideology, that is, the image of Mexico as a racially integrated society through the mix of ancient indigenous and European populations. In 2016, the National Institute of Statistics of Mexico (INEGI) executed a national survey on social mobility (MMSI). In this presentation, I will talk about the process that led to the inclusion of racial/ethnic characteristics in this survey, the media and academic debate that emerged after its publication, and the main results of the survey, which suggest that the effects of ethnic and racial characteristics on social inequality in Mexico extend well beyond the dichotomous indigenous/non-indigenous divide.
Patricio Solís is Professor-Researcher at the Center for Sociological Studies of El Colegio de México (2004-present) and Editor in Chief of the journal Estudios Sociológicos (2016-present). He obtained a PhD in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin (2002), and a MD in Population Studies from FLACSO-México (1995). His research interests are social stratification, intergenerational social mobility, and educational inequality. He was the principal academic advisor of the Intergenerational Social Mobility Module (MMSI) 2016, a national survey carried out by the National Institute of Statistic and Geography of Mexico (INEGI). Two of his most recent publications are the books “Discriminación estructural y desigualdad social” (2017, Consejo Nacional para Prevenir la Discriminación-CEPAL) and “Desigualdad, movilidad social y curso de vida en la Ciudad de México” (2017, El Colegio de México).
Light refreshments will be served. RSVP to Jennifer Laínez.
Cost: Free & Open to the Public
For more information please contact
Jennifer Lainez
jlainez@international.ucla.edu
Download File: Solis_Flyer-55-uub.pdf
Sponsor(s): Center for Mexican Studies, California Center for Population Research, Race & Ethnicity Working Group

Meeting the Challenge of Homelessness
2018-05-21 18:00 - 20:00 | UCLA NPI Auditorium CHS C8-183
UCLA & Homelessness: See. Study. Solve
Public Lecture:
Meeting the Challenge of Homelessness
UCLA NPI Auditorium CHS C8-183
Ending homelessness and serving the needs of our most vulnerable individuals and families is possible, but it requires sustained effort. Culhane will kick off the week by reviewing the national situation, including progress and continued hurdles. He will also describe unique challenges for cities like LA where many homeless are unsheltered.
Dennis P. Culhane PhD
Hosted by Fielding School of Public Health Dean Jody Heymann

Dennis Culhane, University of Pennsylvania
2018-05-23 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
“The Promise of Integrated Data Systems for Social Science Research”
Abstract: Integrated Data Systems (IDS) linking administrative, public agency data hold great promise for rapid and low-cost implementation and evaluation of homeless initiatives. Culhane will review the legal, ethical, scientific and economic challenges of interagency data sharing, as well as systematic efforts including policy reform and inter-agency collaboration to overcome these challenges. Finally, he will review important new IDS initiatives in LA County and California.
More on Prof. Culhane

Joint Seminar Contemporary Cambodia & Genocide Film Screening and Discussion “Angkar”
2018-05-30
Organizers: Patrick Heuveline and Geoff Robinson
May 30th, 2018
4240 Public Affairs Building
Senior seminar will screen film titled “Angkar”. This is a joint effort between Prof. Patrick Heuveline, Sociology and Prof. Geoff Robinson, History. Discussion to follow film screening.

V. Joseph Hotz, Duke University
2018-05-30 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
“The Role of Parental Wealth & Income in Financing Children’s College Attendance & Its Consequences”
Abstract: This paper examines the influence of parental wealth and income on their children’s college attendance and parents’ financial support for it and whether the latter affects the subsequent levels of indebtedness of parents and their children. We use data from the PSID, especially data in the 2013 Rosters and Transfers Module on the incidence and amounts of parents’ financial support for their children’s college. To instrument for the potential endogeneity of parental housing wealth and income on these decisions, we use changes in parents’ local housing and labor market conditions. We find that increases in both parents’ housing wealth and income increase the likelihood of their children attending college through the effect of parents’ financial support. This parental financing of college leads to parents carrying more debt, but their children having no greater student loan debt after graduation. We also find that parental financing of their child’s college education significantly increases the probability that the child actually graduates from college.
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First Annual Robert Mare Student Lectureship
2018-06-06 12:00 - 13:30 | 4240 Public Affairs Bldg
First Annual Robert Mare Student Lecture
Ravaris Moore
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Loyola Marymount University – Los Angeles (August 2018)
PhD Candidate, UCLA Dept. of Sociology (PhD expected June 2018)
Eunice Kennedy Shriver NICHD Trainee, UCLA California Center for Population Research
“Early Estimates of the Effects of Public School Shootings in California on California Public Schools”
Abstract: I employ data from California public schools covering years 1991 to 2017 with data on public school shootings in the state of California over the same period to study the effects of school shootings on schools. This project aims to understand how dropout, enrolment, and achievement measures respond to school shootings. A secondary objective includes discerning whether fatal and non-fatal shootings have differential effects on schools and student outcomes. I will present early results, and I welcome helpful comments and criticism.
Join us for lunch following the talk as we celebrate and bid farewell to all graduating CCPR affiliated students

"The Trouble with Pink and Blue, Gender expression, stigma, and health among U.S. children and adolescents"
2018-09-19 12:00 - 13:00 | 4240 Public Affairs Bldg
“The Trouble with Pink and Blue, Gender expression, stigma, and health among U.S. children and adolescents”
Allegra Gordon, SCD, MPH
Research Scientist, Boston Children’s Hospital
Instructor, Department of Pediatrics, Harvard Medical School
Dr. Gordon will offer a conceptual model for understanding gender expression and health and illustrate this model with examples from recent research on gender nonconformity, school-based violence and bullying, and selected health outcomes in samples of U.S. high school students and young adults.
Lunch will be provided
Sponsored by The Williams Institute, The California Center for Population Research, and The California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Centers

2018-2019 CCPR Welcome and Introductions
2018-10-03 12:00 - 13:30 | 4240 Public Affairs Bldg
Please come join us to learn all about the California Center for Population Research!
Professors Jennie Brand, Patrick Heuveline and Hiram Beltran-Sanchez will be presenting.
This will be the kick-off event for the start of the upcoming 2018-2019 CCPR Seminar Series.

Erin Hartman, University of California Los Angeles
2018-10-17 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Title: Covariate Selection for Generalizing Experimental Results
Abstract: Researchers are often interested in generalizing the average treatment effect (ATE) estimated in a randomized experiment to non-experimental target populations. Researchers can estimate the population ATE without bias if they adjust for a set of variables affecting both selection into the experiment and treatment heterogeneity. Although this separating set has simple mathematical representation, it is often unclear how to select this set in applied contexts. In this paper, we propose a data-driven method to estimate a separating set. Our approach has two advantages. First, our algorithm relies only on the experimental data. As long as researchers can collect a rich set of covariates on experimental samples, the proposed method can inform which variables they should adjust for. Second, we can incorporate researcher-specific data constraints. When researchers know certain variables are unmeasurable in the target population, our method can select a separating set subject to such constraints, if one is feasible. We validate our proposed method using simulations, including naturalistic simulations based on real-world data.
Co-Sponsored with The Center for Social Statistics
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Berk Ozler, World Bank
2018-10-24 12:15 - 13:45 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Title: Increasing the uptake of Long-Acting Reversible Contraceptives (LARCs) among adolescent females and young women in Cameroon
Abstract: In sub-Saharan Africa, 25% of teenagers have started childbearing (ICF, 2015). While young women describe many of these births as planned and intentional, women under the age of 20 also have the greatest percentage of mistimed/unintended pregnancies compared to all other age groups. For example, in Cameroon, more than 30% of the births to this group were unwanted or wanted later (DHS 2011). Low age at first birth has a significant impact on the spacing of births and timing of future pregnancies. It may also reduce accumulation of human capital for both the mother and the child.
Despite the desire to delay childbearing, only a minority of sexually active unmarried women in most low-income countries uses any modern method of contraception (ICF, 2015). The shares of women using reliable short-acting methods of contraception (injectables and pills) are even smaller, with very few unmarried or nulliparous women using LARCs (IUDs or implants). For example, 41% of sexually active unmarried women in Cameroon report using male condoms, with 6% using SARCs and less than 1% using LARCs (DHS 2011). Given meaningful differences in the typical-use effectiveness of these different methods, it is important to understand why most women don’t use any modern methods of contraceptives, and why, among users, women favor the short-acting (but, less reliable) methods over the long-acting (but almost 100% effective) ones.
In this talk, Berk Özler will describe their multi-disciplinary team’s ongoing work in Cameroon that is attempting to identify the barriers to the uptake of LARCs and testing interventions to overcome them. They will briefly summarize the formative qualitative work to identify the supply- and demand-side barriers; describe a tablet-based decision-support tool they developed for nurses to counsel young women on modern contraceptive methods, and describe the design of two randomized-controlled trials that test some of the interventions designed with the government of Cameroon.
Please RSVP for lunch
Co-sponsored with the UCLA Luskin Senior Fellows Speaker Series
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Dalton Conley, Princeton University
2018-10-31 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Title: Social Science in the Age of Genomics
Abstract: The cost of genetic information has been dropping at a rate faster than that of Moore’s law in microcomputing. As a result, the science of genetic prediction has improved by leaps and bounds in recent years, and with it has emerged a novel field: sociogenomics. Sociogenomics seeks to integrate genetic and environmental information to obtain a more robust, complete picture of the causes of human behavior. This talk will highlight some recent examples of sociogenomic research, touching upon issues such as adolescent peer effects, racial discrimination, assortative mating, and fertility patterns. The talk will conclude by discussing the social and policy implications of genetic prediction.
*Co-Sponsored with the Institute for Society and Genetics, the Luskin for Innovation and the Public Policy and Applied Social Science Seminar
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Introducing the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging (ELSI-Brasil)
2018-10-31 13:30 - 14:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Fabíola Bof de Andrade, Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Instituto de Pesquisas René Rachou, Brazil & James Macinko, UCLA
This seminar will provide an introduction to the newest study in the Health and Retirement Study (HRS) family, the Brazilian Longitudinal Study of Aging. The speakers will describe the overall study design and the main topics covered, highlight results from the baseline survey, and discuss how to obtain and use the survey data. All interested faculty, staff and students are welcome to attend.

Chad Hazlett, UCLA
2018-11-07 12:00 - 13:30 | 4240 Public Affairs Bldg
Title: Making Sense of Sensitivity: Extending Omitted Variable Bias
Abstract:We extend the omitted variable bias framework with a suite of tools for sensitivity analysis in regression models that: (i) does not require assumptions about the treatment assignment nor the nature of confounders; (ii) naturally handles multiple confounders, possibly acting non-linearly; (iii) exploits expert knowledge to bound sensitivity parameters; and, (iv) can be easily computed using only standard regression results. In particular, we introduce two novel sensitivity measures suited for routine reporting. The robustness value describes the minimum strength of association unobserved confounding would need to have, both with the treatment and the outcome, to change the research conclusions. The partial R2 of the treatment with the outcome shows how strongly confounders explaining all the residual outcome variation would have to be associated with the treatment to eliminate the estimated effect. Next, we offer graphical tools for elaborating on problematic confounders, examining the sensitivity of point estimates, t-values, as well as “extreme scenarios”. Finally, we describe problems with a common “benchmarking” practice and introduce a novel procedure to instead formally bound the strength of confounders based on comparison to observed covariates. We apply these methods to a running example that estimates the effect of exposure to violence on attitudes toward peace.
Podcast Recording
More info on Chad Hazlett

Adrian Raftery, University of Washington
2018-11-14 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Title: Bayesian Population Projections with Migration Uncertainty
Abstract: The United Nations recently issued official probabilistic population projections for all countries for the first time, using a Bayesian hierarchical modeling framework developed by our group at the University of Washington. These take account of uncertainty about future fertility and mortality, but not international migration. We propose a Bayesian hierarchical autoregressive model for obtaining joint probabilistic projections of migration rates for all countries, broken down by age and sex. Joint trajectories for all countries are constrained to satisfy the requirement of zero global net migration. We evaluate our model using out-of-sample validation and compare point projections to the projected migration rates from a persistence model similar to the UN’s current method for projecting migration, and also to a state of the art gravity model. We also resolve an apparently paradoxical discrepancy between growth trends in the proportion of the world population migrating and the average absolute migration rate across countries. This is joint work with Jonathan Azose and Hana Ševčíková.
Co-sponsored with the Center for Social Statistics
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Michael Clemens, Center for Global Development
2018-11-28 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Title: Immigration Restrictions as Active Labor Market Policy: Evidence from the Mexican Bracero Exclusion
Abstract: An important class of active labor market policy has received little impact evaluation: immigration barriers intended to raise wages and employment by shrinking labor supply. Theories of endogenous technical advance raise the possibility of limited or even perverse impact. We study a natural policy experiment: the exclusion of almost half a million Mexican bracero farm workers from the United States to improve farm labor market conditions. With novel labor market data we measure state-level exposure to exclusion and model the absent changes in technology or crop mix. We fail to reject zero labor market impact, inconsistent with this model.
*Co-sponsored with the Public Policy and Applied Social Sciences Seminar
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Alison Norris, The Ohio State University
2018-12-05 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Title: Abortion utilization in Ohio’s changing legislative context
Abstract: Changes in Ohio, most notably legislation and policy changes since 2011, likely have impacted women’s access to abortion. Many abortion clinics in Ohio have closed in the past seven years, and several others are currently engaged in litigation and are at risk of closure. Clinic closures influence the distance that women travel when seeking abortion. Coupled with the impact of an Ohio law that mandates a 24-hour waiting period after a woman’s initial abortion consultation, loss of a nearby clinic may put abortion out of reach for many women. Other legislation limits where abortions can and cannot be performed and to what gestational stage abortions are performed. This presentation will provide preliminary findings about population-level shifts in abortion utilization, with special attention to change over time, geographic variation, and groups of women who may be underserved.
Co-sponsored with The Bixby Center
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Rocio Titiunik, University of Michigan
2019-01-16 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Title: Internal vs. external validity in studies with incomplete populations
Abstract: Researchers working with administrative data rarely have access to the entire universe of units they need to estimate effects and make statistical inferences. Examples are varied and come from different disciplines. In social program evaluation, it is common to have data on all households who received the program, but only partial information on the universe of households who applied or could have applied for the program. In studies of voter turnout, information on the total number of citizens who voted is usually complete, but data on the total number of voting-eligible citizens is unavailable at low levels of aggregation. In criminology, information on arrests by race is available, but the overall population that could have potentially been arrested is typically unavailable. And in studies of drug overdose deaths, we lack complete information about the full population of drug users.
In all these cases, a reasonable strategy is to study treatment effects and descriptive statistics using the information that is available. This strategy may lack the generality of a full-population study, but may nonetheless yield valuable information for the included units if it has sufficient internal validity. However, the distinction between internal and external validity is complex when the subpopulation of units for which information is available is not defined according to a reproducible criterion and/or when this subpopulation itself is defined by the treatment of interest. When this happens, a useful approach is to consider the full range of conclusions that would be obtained under different possible scenarios regarding the missing information. I discuss a general strategy based on partial identification ideas that may be helpful to assess sensitivity of the partial-population study under weak (non-parametric) assumptions, when information about the outcome variable is known with certainty for a subset of the units. I discuss extensions such as the inclusion of covariates in the estimation model and different strategies for statistical inference.
Co-sponsored with the Political Science Department, Statistics Department and the Center for Social Statistics
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Kosuke Imai, Harvard University
2019-01-23 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Title: Matching Methods for Causal Inference with Time-Series Cross-Section Data
Abstract: Matching methods aim to improve the validity of causal inference in observational studies by reducing model dependence and offering intuitive diagnostics. While they have become a part of standard tool kit for empirical researchers across disciplines, matching methods are rarely used when analyzing time-series cross-section (TSCS) data, which consist of a relatively large number of repeated measurements on the same units. We develop a methodological framework that enables the application of matching methods to TSCS data. In the proposed approach, we first match each treated observation with control observations from other units in the same time period that have an identical treatment history up to the pre-specified number of lags. We use standard matching and weighting methods to further refine this matched set so that the treated observation has outcome and covariate histories similar to those of its matched control observations. Assessing the quality of matches is done by examining covariate balance. After the refinement, we estimate both short-term and long-term average treatment effects using the difference-in-differences estimator, accounting for a time trend. We also show that the proposed matching estimator can be written as a weighted linear regression estimator with unit and time fixed effects, providing model-based standard errors. We illustrate the proposed methodology by estimating the causal effects of democracy on economic growth, as well as the impact of inter-state war on inheritance tax. The open-source software is available for implementing the proposed matching methods.
Co-sponsored with the Political Science Department, Statistics Department and the Center for Social Statistics
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Ushma Upadhyay, UC San Francisco
2019-01-30 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Title: Measuring Reproductive Autonomy: Are the questions different for Adolescents and Young Adults?
Abstract: Ushma Upadhyay, PhD, MPH will discuss her previous work developing the Reproductive Autonomy Scale, which has been mainly used among adults. Her current work focuses on understanding reproductive empowerment among young people, and the development of a new psychometric measure of Sexual Health and Reproductive Empowerment for Young Adults (The SHREYA Scale).
Co-sponsored with The Bixby Center
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Peter Bearman, Columbia University
2019-02-13 12:00 - 13:30 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Title: Neural mechanisms lie behind the emergence of dyadic affective reciprocity and transitive closure in human groups
Abstract: This talk considers a set of findings from socializing cognitive social neuroscience that captures neural and social network data at multiple time points for a group of students who volunteered to organize workers in very difficult social situations on the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, in the Summer of Respect project. We identify a neural mechanism for the emergence of affective reciprocity, the building block of social solidarity. We show that we can predict from neural signatures who group members will like five months in the future. We extend this work to a discussion of transitivity, or balance. Time permitting, we discuss how a neural signature of self-enhancement (narcissism) predicts becoming peripheral in small groups, supporting the idea that there is “no I in team”.
Co-sponsored by the Sociology Department
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