California Center for Population Research

Los Angeles' Replication Games
2024-02-28 08:45 - 16:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Room 4240A, 4th Floor, Public Affairs Building, 337 Charles Young Dr., LA, CA 90095
We are looking for researchers, post-docs, and PhD students
interested in a one-day replication challenge.
Participants will be granted co-authorship on a meta-paper
combining the reproductions and replications, and will have the
opportunity to publish their work. Participants will be matched based
on field, and a study from a leading social science journal will be
assigned to each team based on interests.
The event will take place at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Virtual participants are also welcome. The event is sponsored by the
California Center for Population Research.
Interested researchers and/or teams should send their field
of study and preferred statistical software to:
ABEL BRODEUR
abrodeur@uottawa.ca
Pre-games virtual meeting slides/recording can be found here.
More information about the event can be found here

Brittany Chambers, University of California, Davis, "The Solutions are in the Community: Centering Black Women’s Voices to Advance Birth Equity"
2024-03-06 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography:
Dr. Brittany Chambers Butcher is a tenure track Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Ecology at the University of California, Davis. She is a community health scientist whose program of research merges critical and public health theories to partner with Black women and birthing people to better understand, operationalize and dismantle racism. Dr. Chambers Butcher uses a community research model in her work to #listentoblackwomen to reconceptualize structural racism and the way it shows up in Black communities to contribute to adverse maternal and infant health outcomes. Building on this work, Dr. Chambers Butcher received a competitive two-year UCSF-Kaiser Permanente Building Interdisciplinary Research Careers in Women’s Health (BIRCWH) K12 award to collect formative data to co-develop racial equity training for perinatal care providers with Black women and perinatal providers of color. She now was a K01 focused on pilot testing this racial equity training among perinatal providers in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The Solutions are in the Community: Centering Black Women’s Voices to Advance Birth Equity
Abstract:
Structural racism has been identified as a root cause of maternal and infant health inequities experienced by Black women and birthing people, and their children. In effort to better understand and dismantle racism, centering community voice is essential. This presentation will share a community research model used to advance birth equity and example projects implementing this model to: (1) develop a conceptual framework of structural racism from the perspectives of Black women; (2) develop and pilot test a racial equity training for perinatal care providers; and (3) developing a healing toolkit for community researchers.

Nora Daniels, Associate Director, UCLA Corporate and Foundation Relations
2024-03-13 11:00 - 12:00
Nora Daniels, Associate Director, UCLA Corporate and Foundation Relations will join our bagel hour at 11 am on March 13, 2024. Nora supports faculty across the college by identifying, cultivating, soliciting, and stewarding private foundation prospects for funding their research, programs, and initiatives. This support includes (but is not limited to): proposal development and internal approvals (OCGA, academic leadership), RFP applications, cultivating relationships with foundation program officers, and foundation strategy development.

Conrad Miller, University of California, Berkeley, “Class Disparities and Discrimination in Traffic Stops and Searches”
2024-03-13 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography:
Conrad Miller is an associate professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the Haas School of Business and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is a labor economist who studies inequality between social groups. His research pursues three broad research questions: (1) what role do firms play in producing labor market inequality between social groups? (2) what are the consequences of discrimination? and (3) what are the effects of policy responses to discrimination?
“Class Disparities and Discrimination in Traffic Stops and Searches”
Abstract: We document class disparities and discrimination in the incidence of police searches. Low-income motorists are more likely to be pursued in pretext stops and to be searched for contraband. Yet searches of low-income motorists are less likely to yield contraband. To isolate class-based discrimination, we show that motorists stopped in multiple vehicles are more likely to be searched when stopped in a vehicle that signals they are low-income. Overall contraband yield would increase if police did not engage in vehicle-based profiling. We provide suggestive evidence that lower hassle costs associated with arrests of low-income motorists help to explain trooper behavior.
A recording of this event can be found here.

F31 Predoctoral NIH Funding Panel
2024-03-14 12:00 - 13:00
Join us on Thursday, March 14 from noon- 1 pm
Please RSVP and submit questions for the panelist beforehand using this form.
Location: UCLA CCPR seminar room (4240A Public Affairs)
The panel will kick off with a brief introduction, setting the stage for a discussion about NIH funding opportunities focused specifically on predoctoral F31 grants. Attendees will gain a comprehensive overview of the funding mechanisms and application procedures, empowering them to navigate the NIH funding landscape with confidence.
Our panelists comprise both current applicants and F31 grant recipients: Andrew Hess (Econ), Eunhee Park (Community Health Science), and Esmeralda Melgoza (Community Health Sciences). They will highlight key considerations for crafting successful grant proposals, including tips for writing compelling narratives, addressing reviewer feedback, and maximizing impact. Whether you’re a seasoned researcher or new to the world of grant writing, this event promises to equip you with the knowledge and tools needed to secure NIH funding for your research endeavors.
Following the presentations, attendees will have the opportunity to participate in a dynamic Q&A session, where they can seek clarification and engage directly with our panelists. Don’t miss this chance to gain valuable insights, connect with fellow researchers, and take your NIH funding journey to the next level.
Cookies will be provided.

Rebecca Dizon-Ross, University of Chicago, "Mechanism Design for Personalized Policy: A Field Experiment Incentivizing Exercise"
2024-04-03 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography:
Rebecca Dizon-Ross is a development economist and applied microeconomist with an interest in human capital. Much of her current work is on the demand side, aiming to understand the determinants of households’ investments in health and education and to evaluate interventions to increase investment. Rebecca is an Associate Professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Before joining Booth, Dizon-Ross was a Prize Fellow in Economics, History, and Politics at Harvard University and a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She received a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University and a B.A. (summa cum laude) from Harvard University.
Mechanism Design for Personalized Policy: A Field Experiment Incentivizing Exercise
Abstract:
Personalizing policies can theoretically increase their effectiveness. However, personalization is difficult when individual types are unobservable and the preferences of policymakers and individuals are not aligned, which could cause individuals to misreport their type. Mechanism design offers a strategy to overcome this issue: offer a menu of policy choices and make it incentive-compatible for participants to choose the “right” variant. Using a field experiment that personalized incentives for exercise among 6,800 adults with diabetes and hypertension in urban India, we show that personalizing with an incentive-compatible choice menu substantially improves program performance, increasing the treatment effect of incentives on exercise by 80% without increasing program costs relative to a one-size-fits-all benchmark. Personalizing with mechanism design also performs well relative to another potential strategy for personalization: assigning policy variants based on observables.

The Digital Migrant Health Record: DR. Maria Elena Ramos Tovar
2024-04-08 13:00 - 14:00 | YRL, Room 23167
Electronic patient records (EPRs) have been shown to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare delivery. While developed countries are ahead in this transition, with nearly all hospital settings relying on EPRs, developing countries are still lagging. Without EPRs, physicians struggle to have a clear medical history of patients; consequently, healthcare quality and efficiency are compromised. This is particularly true for migrants, a subset of the population that could benefit from EPRs as cross-border mobility often entails numerous threats to the safety, integrity, and health.
This presentation will showcase the project “Right and access to health for migrants: Health care trajectories of people on the move through cities in northeastern Mexico and the Texas Valley region,” or “Migrant Health Trajectories” for short. The first intervention of the project is the creation and implementation of an EPR called “Expediente Digital Migrante” (Migrant Digital Record Home | Trayectoria de Salud Migrante). This instrument is designed to document and monitor the physical and mental health of migrants in transit; it comprises clinical history, medical notes, results of physical and clinical examinations, and depression scales. The EPR can be accessed across different countries and by multiple providers. So far, the EPR system has been implemented in 7 migrant shelters across the Mexican states of Nuevo Leon (5), Coahuila (1), and Reynosa (1), all in the Northeast region, and more than 2900 patients have been registered in the system.

Student PAA Practice Talk (Development Workshop)
2024-04-10 12:00 - 13:15
Details TBA

PAA 2024 Annual Meeting at Columbus, Ohio
2024-04-17 - 2024-04-20 | Columbus, Ohio Hyatt Regency Columbus, Hyatt Regency Columbus, Columbus, OH, United States
Details to be added later.

Andrew Penner, University of California, Irvine, "The Academic and Socioemotional Effects of Advanced Mathematics Coursetaking"
2024-04-24 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography
Andrew Penner is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Irvine and a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. Penner’s research examines how society creates categories and sorts people into them, and focuses on the consequences of these categorization processes for inequality. At UCI, Penner serves as the director of the Center for Administrative Data Analysis, and much of Penner’s ongoing research uses novel administrative data infrastructure to understand how schools do and don’t prepare students to thrive as adults.
The Academic and Socioemotional Effects of Advanced Mathematics Coursetaking
Abstract
Although existing research suggests that students benefit on a range of outcomes when they enroll in early algebra classes, policy efforts that accelerate algebra enrollment for large numbers of students often have negative effects. We explore this divergence, providing regression discontinuity evidence on the effects of early algebra placement showing that early algebra boosts subsequent math and English Language Arts (ELA) outcomes. We then investigate how early algebra might affect ELA outcomes. We find no effects of early algebra placement on social and emotional learning outcomes, and no effects on the characteristics of the ELA teachers students were exposed to. But we do find large and substantively meaningful effects of early algebra placement on students’ peer composition. This finding provides insights into why policies aimed at accelerating algebra broadly may fail, and why early algebra affects students’ achievement beyond mathematics.

Jeff Weaver, University of Southern California, Hiring Subsidies for the Disadvantaged: Evidence from the Work Opportunity Tax Credit
2024-05-01 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography:
Jeff Weaver is an Assistant Professor in the department of economics at USC. He is an applied microeconomist working on a range of topics in development economics, political economy, and labor economics. His past work has examined topics such as public service delivery in India, the evolution of cultural institutions, and crime and low wage labor markets in the United States.
A recording of this event can be found here.

Gabriella Conti, University of College London
2024-05-08 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: TBA
Abstract: TBA

Christopher Walters, University of California, Berkeley (STC Workshop), Title: Empirical Bayes and large-scale inference.
2024-05-15 13:00 - 16:00 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: Christopher Walters is an Associate Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Walters joined the faculty at Berkeley after completing his PhD in economics at MIT in 2013. He is also a Research Associate in the NBER programs on education and labor studies, an IZA Research Fellow and an affiliate of JPAL-North America and MIT’s Blueprint Labs. His academic research focuses on topics in labor economics, the economics of education, and applied econometrics, including work on school choice, early childhood programs, methods for evaluating school quality, experimental measurement of labor market discrimination, causal inference, and empirical Bayes methods.
Abstract: This workshop will cover empirical Bayes methods for studying heterogeneity, estimating individual effects, and making decisions in settings with many unit-specific parameters. Examples include studies of school, teacher, and physician quality; neighborhood effects on economic mobility; firm effects on wages; employer-specific labor market discrimination; and individualized treatment effect predictions and policy recommendations. Topics will include methods for quantifying variation in effects, empirical Bayes shrinkage, connections to machine learning methods, and large-scale inference tools for multiple testing and decision-making. The lecture will be accompanied by coding examples.
A recording of this event can be found here

Peter Hull, Brown University, "Formula Instruments" (STC Workshop)
2024-05-22 13:00 - 16:00 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography:
Peter Hull is a Professor of Economics at Brown University, a Faculty Research Fellow in the NBER Labor Studies, Education, and Health Care programs in Labor Studies, and the econometrics editor at the Review of Economics and Statistics. His research spans a variety of topics in applied econometrics, education, health care, discrimination, and criminal justice. He was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2023 in recognition of this work.
Formula Instruments
Abstract:
Many studies in economics use instruments or treatments which combine a set of exogenous shocks with other predetermined variables by a known formula. Examples include shift-share instruments, measures of social or spatial spillovers, and treatments capturing eligibility for a public policy. This workshop reviews recent econometric tools for this setting, which leverage the assignment process of the exogenous shocks and the structure of the formula for identification. Practical insights will be illustrated with two empirical applications and a coding lab.

Parag Pathak, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2024-05-29 12:00 - 13:15
Biography: Parag A. Pathak is the Class of 1922 Professor of Economics at MIT, founding co-director of the NBER Working Group on Market Design, and founder of MIT’s Blueprint Labs. His research is on education and market design. He is currently a co-editor of Econometrica and the recipient of the 2018 John Bates Clark Medal.
Abstract: TBA

Rob Mare Student Lecture 2024
2024-06-05 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
A recording of this event can be found here.

The Summer Institutes in Computational Social Science (SICSS) 2024
2024-06-24 08:00 - 2024-07-03 17:00 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
From June 24 to July 3, 2024 the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Division of Social Sciences and the California Center for Population Research will sponsor the Summer Institute in Computational Social Science, to be held at the University of California Los Angeles.
The Organizing Committee
Jennie Brand, Professor, Sociology and Statistics
Dora Costa, Professor, Economics
Patrick Heuveline, Professor, Sociology, and International Institute
Randall Kuhn, Professor, Community Health Sciences
For more information about the event go here: https://sicss.io/2024/ucla/

Welcome Back to CCPR
2024-10-02 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg

Anne Karing, University of Chicago, "Incentives and Motivation Crowd-Out: Experimental Evidence from Childhood Immunization"
2024-10-16 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: Anne Karing’s research focuses on the economics of healthcare delivery and health-seeking behaviors in low-income countries, applying insights from psychology. Her core work examines how social signaling motives can change behaviors, in ways that benefit individual health and society. She has implemented large-scale field experiments that examine the effectiveness of social signaling incentives in increasing the demand for childhood immunization and deworming treatment in Sierra Leone and Kenya. As part of this research, Anne also conducts follow-up surveys with cohorts previously exposed to incentives to assess their potential crowd-out effects on motivation. Other branches of her work include markets of medicines, including how formal and illegal markets interact, and the relevance of social preferences and competition in taming market failures among formal providers. Karing earned a BA with honors in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics as well as an MPhil in Economics from the University of Oxford. She completed a PhD in Economics at University of California, Berkeley and a postdoctoral fellowship at Princeton University.

Incentives and Motivation Crowd-Out: Experimental Evidence from Childhood Immunization

Abstract: We investigate the impact of incentives and their withdrawal on parents’ decisions to vaccinate subsequent children. We follow up with parents three years after exposure to a bracelet incentive given to children for timely vaccination in Sierra Leone. Our analysis leverages the design of an experiment in which clinics were randomly assigned to offer incentives or not. Since only parents with a newborn at the time of the experiment were eligible for the incentive, we can exploit individual variation in exposure within clinics. First, we find that eligibility for an incentive for an earlier child reduces parents’ motivation to vaccinate their subsequent child on time, with reductions of 5 to 11 percent in the number of timely visits compared to unexposed parents. There are no effects on vaccination rates by 15 months of age, suggesting that parents delay vaccination rather than abstaining altogether. Second, parents living in communities where incentives were offered but who were ineligible for them show no effects, ruling out the possibility that changes in community norms or clinic practices drive the results. Third, incentives that signaled being a caring parent do not lead to adverse effects. Using causal forest analysis and testing for differences in knowledge and practices around immunization, we rule out that negative effects are due to learning from the removal of incentives. Instead, we conclude that the exposure to incentives crowded out parents’ intrinsic motivation by altering their self-perception or relationship with vaccination.
An audio recording of Dr. Karing’s presentation may be accessed here.
The slides of the presentation may be accessed here.

Reflections on Graduate Training at CCPR/UCLA: A Panel to Honor Judith Seltzer
2024-10-23 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Join us for a panel to honor Prof. Judith Seltzer’s career and graduate training with CCPR and UCLA! Prof. Judith Seltzer is a founding member and former director of CCPR. She received the Sara McLanahan award from the Population Association of America.
Panelists include former UCLA / CCPR graduate students Esther Friedman (Research Associate Professor, Survey Research Center, University of Michigan), Charles Lau (Chief Research Officer, GeoPoll), Christine Schwartz (Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Emily Wiemers (Associate Professor, Department of Public Administration and International Affairs, Syracuse University), who will be sharing reflections on their training at CCPR with Prof. Seltzer.
Professor Judith Seltzer’s remarkable body of research has studied contemporary shifts in kinship patterns in the U.S. (such as marriage, cohabitation, divorce, and non-married families), intergenerational obligations, relationships between nonresident fathers and children, and how policies affect family change. She has also contributed to improvements in the quality of survey data on families and family networks, including a module on kin networks and transfers in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, family content in the Add Health Parent Study, and most recently developing a coding scheme for the Health and Retirement Study questions on who respondents gave or received help from during the COVID-19 pandemic. Judy has also contributed enormously to the development of population research in the profession broadly and at UCLA. She has been an active member of the Population Association of America, including serving as president in 2016 and as a founding member of the California Center for Population Research (CCPR), which has shaped the scholarship and careers of multiple scholars. Judy’s students and colleagues have benefited enormously from her intellectual contributions and her tremendous generosity of spirit.
An audio recording of the panel event may be accessed here.

Dan Thompson, University of California, Los Angeles, "How Much Does Health Affect Voter Participation?"
2024-10-30 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: Dan Thompson is an assistant professor of political science at UCLA studying American politics and political methodology. He studies how the rules governing elections affect who participates, who wins, and ultimately the policies governments choose. He collects new data on elections and electoral institutions which he combinse with large administrative datasets on government behavior. He then uses modern empirical techniques for causal inference to study how electoral institutions shape election outcomes and public policy. Prior to joining UCLA, Dr. Thompson received a PhD in political science from Stanford in 2020 and a Master of Public Policy degree from UC Berkeley in 2014.

How Much Does Health Affect Voter Participation?

Abstract: Across elections from 2006 to 2022, reported turnout rates are over 6 percentage points lower for people with disabilities, and non-voters cite health as one of the top reasons for failing to cast a ballot. Federal law requires that polling places be accessible to people with disabilities, and many states have expanded convenience voting options in part to accommodate the needs of people facing health issues and those with disabilities. How much do adverse health events reduce voter participation? To answer these questions, we link UCLA Health medical records to lists of registered voters in Los Angeles going back to 2016. We compare people diagnosed with cancer or a substantial cardiovascular event in the year before an election to those diagnosed after election day. We find that cancer causes a 3 percentage point drop in turnout. We also present suggestive evidence that the effect is smaller in 2020 after Los Angeles began mailing a ballot to all registered voters.
An audio recording of Dr. Thompson’s presentation may be accessed here.
The slides of the presentation may be accessed here.

Susan Cassels, University of California, Santa Barbara, "Patterns of Sexual Minority Men's Lifestyle and Healthcare Related Activity Spaces in Los Angeles"
2024-11-06 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: Dr. Susan Cassels is a Professor in the Department of Geography at UCSB, and the Director of the Broom Center for Demography. She studies and teaches topics related to health geography, demography, and infectious disease epidemiology. The central focus of her research is on geographic mobility, sexual health, and HIV prevention. Her current research is on geo-social determinants of HIV transmission dynamics – or in other words how and why certain people are more susceptible to HIV, and how, where, and why HIV spreads to other people. With colleagues at UCLA, she has implemented a survey on activity spaces of sexual minority men in LA to examine patterns of geo-spatial exposures, and whether places of exposure differ by activity. Recently, she has published a couple of qualitative papers as well. Current qualitative work is aimed to understand how social networks and geographic environments shape substance use behaviors.
Patterns of Sexual Minority Men’s Lifestyle and Healthcare Related Activity Spaces in Los Angeles
Abstract: For sexual minority men (SMM), geo-social exposures in residential and non-residential places are important to consider for health, as home, social, sexual, substance use, and healthcare-related locations may be different. Using data from 219 Black and Hispanic SMM within Los Angeles County, we identify, describe, and assess overlap of both lifestyle and healthcare-related activity space clusters, or “hotspots.” Lifestyle activity space hotspots are spatially patterned by socio-demographic characteristics, primarily along race and ethnic categories. Hispanic individuals’ lifestyle locations were less likely to be clustered, while the opposite was true for Black individuals. Interestingly, healthcare-related hotspots are not significantly associated with any socio-demographic features. Hotspot congruence was higher than we hypothesized, as hotspots of residential locations contained the majority of sex hotspots and substance use hotspots. Our work demonstrates a valid method for reliably measuring behaviors of HIV, sex, and substance use and identifying spatial patterns in geographic space.

An audio recording of Dr. Cassels’ presentation may be accessed here.
The slides of the presentation may be accessed here.

Lisa Dettling, Federal Reserve Board, “Did the Modern Mortgage Set the Stage for the Baby Boom?”
2024-11-13 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: Lisa Dettling is a Principal Economist in the Division of Research and Statistics at the Federal Reserve Board, where she is part of the team that forecasts the economic effects of fiscal policy (taxes, transfers, and government spending). She is currently on leave from the Board and visiting CCPR this fall. Lisa’s academic research is in labor and public economics, with a focus on domestic policy issues relating to families and household financial well-being. Her work has appeared in leading journals, such as the American Economic Review and the Review of Economic Studies. Lisa obtained a PhD in Economics from the University of Maryland in 2013, and B.S. in Mathematics and Economics from The Ohio State University in 2007.
“Did the Modern Mortgage Set the Stage for the Baby Boom?”
Abstract: This paper proposes that the adoption of the modern US mortgage (i.e., low down payment, long-term, and fixed-rate)–led by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veteran’s Administration (VA) loan insurance programs—set the stage for the mid-twentieth century US baby boom by dramatically raising rates of home ownership for young families. Using newly digitized data on FHA- and VA- backed loan issuance and births by state-year, and a novel instrumental variables strategy that isolates supply-side variation in loan issuance, we find that the FHA/VA mortgage insurance programs led to 3 million additional births from 1935-1957, roughly 10 percent of the excess births in the baby boom. Aggregate effects mask differences by group — we find no effects of FHA/VA lending on births for Black women, consistent with well-documented racial discrimination in these programs. Our results highlight the importance of housing affordability for fertility decisions.

Sarah Miller, University of Michigan, "Does Income Affect Health? Evidence from the OpenResearch Unconditional Income Study"
2024-12-04 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: Sarah Miller is an associate professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. She received a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2012. Dr. Miller’s research interests are in health economics and, in particular, the short-term and long-term effects of public policies that expand health insurance coverage, and in the effects of income and other social program support on health and well-being. In 2022, Dr. Miller was awarded the ASHEcon Medal, awarded by the American Society of Health Economists to an economist aged 40 or younger who has made the most significant contributions to the field of health economics. She is also a co-editor for the Journal of Public Economics. Her work has been published in the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the New England Journal of Medicine, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, the Journal of Public Economics, and the Review of Economics and Statistics, among other journals, and has been cited in outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and the Economic Report of the President.
Does Income Affect Health? Evidence from the OpenResearch Unconditional Income Study
Abstract: Does income affect health? We randomized 1,000 low-income adults in the United States to receive $1,000 per month for three years, with 2,000 control participants receiving $50 per month. The transfer generated large but short-lived improvements in stress and food security, increased hospital and emergency department use, and increased medical spending by about $20 per month. However, we find a precise null effect of the transfer on several measures of health, including biomarkers derived from blood draws. We also find precise null effects on access to health care, physical activity, sleep, and measures related to preventive care and health behavior.

A recording of Sarah Miller’s presentation may be accessed here.
The slides of the presentation may be accessed here.

Marissa Thompson, Columbia University "They have Black in their blood: Exploring how genetic ancestry tests affect racial appraisals and classifications"
2025-01-22 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: Marissa Thompson is an assistant professor of sociology at Columbia University. Her research focuses on the causes and consequences of racial and socioeconomic inequality, with an emphasis on understanding the role of education in shaping disparate outcomes over the life-course. Marissa’s current research investigates, for example, parental preferences regarding school segregation, the causal effects of first-dollar scholarship policies on college access, and the role of genetic ancestry tests in racial boundary-making processes. She employs a range of methods in her work, including quantitative methods, survey experiments, and both computational and qualitative analyses of text data.

“They have Black in their blood”: Exploring how genetic ancestry tests affect racial appraisals and classifications

Abstract: How do genetic ancestry tests (GATs) affect Black Americans’ beliefs about when others should – or should not – identify as Black? Using two survey experiments that integrate causal inference with computational text analysis, we disentangle the effects of GAT results, setting, and prior identification on racial classifications and evaluations. We find that respondents have an increased likelihood of approving of a person’s decision to identify as Black and of classifying them as Black if that person has higher levels of GAT-measured Sub-Saharan African ancestry. Further, we identify meaningful gaps between the responses made by respondents themselves and their perception of the typical response made by members of their own racial group; these patterns are consistent with broad pluralistic ignorance towards the social rules governing racial classifications and evaluations. Finally, free text responses reveal a range of strategies used in evaluations. We find that the aspects that affect approval and evaluations differ from those that affect classifications; respondents selectively integrate different sources of information, including GAT results, via a dual classification and evaluation process which we term racial contextualism.

An audio recording of Marissa Thompson’s presentation may be accessed here.
The slides of the presentation may be accessed here.

Sherry Glied, New York University Wagner School, "Who Really Pays for Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance? General Reflections and New Evidence from the ACA Dependent Coverage Mandate"
2025-01-29 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: Sherry Glied, an economist, is Dean of the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University. From 2010-2012, Glied served as the Senate-confirmed Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health and Human Services. She served as Senior Economist on the President’s Council of Economic Advisers in 1992-1993, under Presidents Bush and Clinton. In 2016-2017, she served on the Commission on Evidence-Based Policymaking. She is currently chairing New York Governor Hochul’s Commission on the Future of Health Care. Glied is a member of the Board of Directors of Geisinger, the Milbank Fund, and the Social Science Research Council. She is a Nonresident Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution and an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine, the National Bureau of Economic Research, the National Academy of Social Insurance, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Who Really Pays for Employer-Sponsored Health Insurance? General Reflections and New Evidence from the ACA Dependent Coverage Mandate
Abstract: The incidence of employer-provided health insurance within firms is important for the design of the tax treatment of employer-based coverage and for understanding the evolving structure of the US labor market. Economic theory and empirical studies conclude that the cost of voluntary employer-sponsored health insurance falls on employees as a group. However, the distribution of overall and subsidy incidence and the mechanism through which incidence occurs have not been well-established.

This talk will provide new evidence (joint with Hansoo Ko) on incidence by examining the dependent coverage mandate in the ACA, which mandates that adult children to age 26 may remain on their parents’ policies. We confirm the overall incidence of the mandate and then consider three situations in which the benefits of this new coverage to an employee differ from the costs to an employer. I will then relate this evidence to the broader empirical literature and policy.

An audio recording of Sherry Glied’s presentation may be accessed here.
The slides of the presentation may be accessed here.

Robert Fairlie, University of California, Los Angeles, "Affirmative Action, Faculty Productivity and Caste Interactions: Evidence from Engineering Colleges in India"
2025-02-12 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: Fairlie is a Distinguished Professor at UCLA. He is an Economist and Chair of the Department of Public Policy. He is also a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He studies a wide range of topics including entrepreneurship, education, labor, racial, gender and caste inequality, information technology, immigration, health, and development. He received a Ph.D. and M.A. from Northwestern University and B.A. with honors from Stanford University, and has held full-time or visiting positions at UC Santa Cruz, Stanford University, Yale University, UC Berkeley, and Australian National University. He has received funding from the National Science Foundation, National Academies, and Russell Sage Foundation as well as numerous government agencies and foundations, and has testified in front of the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Department of Treasury, and the California State Assembly.
Affirmative Action, Faculty Productivity and Caste Interactions: Evidence from Engineering Colleges in India
Abstract: Affirmative action programs are often criticized because of concerns over lower worker productivity. In India, colleges are required to reserve 50 percent of faculty hires from lower caste groups. We collect and analyze data from Indian engineering colleges, some of which randomly assign students to classrooms. We find that reservation category faculty have lower education levels, professorial ranks and experience than general category faculty. Yet, we find no evidence that reservation category faculty provide lower quality instruction or have lower research or administrative productivity. Examining heterogeneity in instructional quality, we also find no evidence of positive reservation category “teacher-like-me” effects.

An audio recording of Robert Farilie’s presentation may be accessed here.
The slides of the presentation may be accessed here.

Sarah Brayne, Stanford University, "Living and Dying in the Shadow of Mass Incarceration"
2025-02-19 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: Sarah Brayne is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology. In her work, she uses qualitative and quantitative methods to understand whether and how data-intensive surveillance shapes individual trajectories and population-level disparities. Her first book, Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing, draws on ethnographic research within the Los Angeles Police Department to understand the social implications of law enforcement’s use of predictive analytics and new surveillance technologies.
Current projects investigate whether and how exposure to the criminal legal system shapes racial and ethnic disparities in health, aging, and mortality; how social media data is used in the criminal legal process; and role of surveillance in forced migration.
Prior to joining the faculty at Stanford, Professor Brayne taught at the University of Texas at Austin, where she co-founded the Texas Prison Education Initiative. She holds a B.A. in Sociology from the University of British Columbia, an M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University, and completed a postdoc at Microsoft Research.

Living and Dying in the Shadow of Mass Incarceration

Abstract: In the United States, racial disparities in life expectancy are well-documented. However, the role of incarceration is largely absent from this research. This gap is striking, given the disproportionate exposure to incarceration among Black men. In this talk, I use administrative and vital statistics data to understand the impact of incarceration on racial disparities in life expectancy. This research highlights the complex interplay between incarceration and health, ultimately arguing there is a critical need for analyses of data on incarceration in population research.

Eliana La Ferrara, Harvard Kennedy School, "Changing Harmful Norms through Information and Coordination: Experimental Evidence from Somalia"
2025-03-05 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: Eliana La Ferrara is Professor of Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School. She received a PhD in Economics from Harvard in 1999. Prior to joining HKS, she was the Invernizzi Chair in Development Economics at Bocconi University, Milan, where she founded and directed the Laboratory for Effective Anti-poverty Policies (LEAP). She is a Past President of the Econometric Society, Foreign Honorary Member of the American Economic Association, and International Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also NBER Research Associate, Director of Development Economics at CEPR, and J-PAL Affiliate. She was president of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) in 2016-2019 and of the European Economic Association in 2018. She is the recipient of the 2020 Birgit Grodal Award. Her research focuses on Development Economics and Political Economics, particularly on the role of social factors in economic development. She has studied ethnic diversity, stereotypes, kin structure and social norms, and the effects of television on social outcomes. She has also investigated political constraints to development, with particular focus on violent conflict in Africa. Her work has been published in leading economic journals.
Changing Harmful Norms through Information and Coordination: Experimental Evidence from Somalia
Abstract: We study the role of biased beliefs and coordination failures in perpetuating the norm of female genital cutting (FGC) in Somalia, where 98% of women are cut. We experimentally evaluate three interventions to decrease the prevalence of infibulation, the most harmful type of FGC: (i) correcting misperceptions about support for the practice; (ii) public declarations of one’s willingness to abandon it; and (iii) a combination of the two. We find that on average community members overestimate others’ support for infibulation. Correcting this misperception reduces the probability of infibulation by 40% two years after the intervention. Over the same time horizon, this leads to an increase in the `intermediate’ type of FGC (Sunna). When taking into account parents’ future plans for younger, uncut daughters, the misperception treatment no longer results in higher Sunna rates, increasing instead the likelihood that parents plan not to cut. The public declaration treatment does not reduce infibulation, except in communities where participants had high priors about community support for abandoning the practice. The combined treatment yields similar but insignificant results. Our findings point to the importance of correcting biased beliefs when designing coordination interventions to eradicate harmful norms.

An audio recording of Eliana La Ferrara’s presentation may be accessed here.

Abigail Weitzman, University of Texas, Austin "Threat Evasive Migration: A Population Perspective"
2025-04-16 12:00 - 13:15
Biography: Dr. Weitzman is a sociologist and demographer whose research explores two interrelated questions: How do expectations, desires, and threats influence the timing and nature of important events in people’s lives, cumulatively shaping demographic patterns and population dynamics? And, reciprocally, how do shifting demographic circumstances influence aspirations, perceived threats, and behaviors in ways that determine individuals’ health outcomes and life trajectories? Her most recent work takes up these questions in the context of migration, considering how individuals and families navigate evolving threats and opportunities in both countries of origin and reception.

Threat Evasive Migration: A Population Perspective

Abstract: Approximately 14 million refugees and other migrants in need of international protection (MNP) live in the Western hemisphere, approximately 83% of whom reside in Latin America or the Caribbean. Demographers know surprisingly little about this population or about threat evasive migration more generally, e.g. migration undertaken to escape threats to survival. Moreover, most research on MNP is concentrated among refugees and asylum-seekers, which has allowed states’ legal categorization of migrants to dictate whose experiences we understand. Drawing on six years of fieldwork with MNP in Costa Rica, I highlight the need to move away from conventional sampling approaches; discuss network-based sampling methods as an alternative; and illustrate how broadening the lens beyond asylum-seekers provides new insights into violence-related selection processes.
