Coffee and Conversation
2026-03-30 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | CCPR Break Room
Join CCPR affiliates for coffee and bagels from Noah’s Bagels, and take the opportunity to get to know one another in a casual setting.
Coffee and Conversation is held Mondays at 10:00 AM in the CCPR Break Room.
This week’s session will be hosted by the CCPR Directors who will be there to guide the conversation, share insights, and connect with attendees in an informal setting.

Laurence Baker, Stanford University, "Does the form of medical practice affect health care utilization and costs?"
2026-04-01 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Room 4240A, 4th Floor, Public Affairs Building, 337 Charles Young Dr., LA, CA 90095
Biography: Laurence Baker, Ph.D. is Professor of Health Policy and Knowles Professor of Human Biology at Stanford University. He is a health economist who uses applies economic and statistical analysis to study challenges facing the health care system. Professor Baker has published widely and served as an advisor to the public and private sectors on a range of health care system and financing issues including the effects of financial incentives and provider organizational structure on the delivery of health care and health care spending, technological change in medicine, competition in health care markets, and managed care and insurance plans. Professor Baker also serves as Associate Chair for Education in the Department of Health Policy and holds appointments as Senior Fellow of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, MA. Professor Baker directs the Stanford School of Medicine’s Scholarly Concentration and Medical Scholars programs. Professor Baker is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and a recipient of the ASHE Medal from the American Society of Health Economists which recognizes the top American health economist under the age of 40. He has also received the Alice S. Hersh Young Investigator Award from AcademyHealth and the National Institute for Health Care Management’s research prize. He is Past President of the American Society of Health Economists, and previously served on the board of AcademyHealth and the International Health Economics Association. Professor Baker received his Ph.D. in Economics from Princeton University in 1994 and his B.A. in Economics and Mathematics from Calvin College in 1990.

Does the form of medical practice affect health care utilization and costs?

The growth of larger multispecialty physician practices prompts questions about the effects of practice organization on health care delivery, outcomes, and costs. We use Medicare claims data from 2006-2020 to examine differences in spending, health care utilization, and quality for traditional Medicare patients who receive primary care from practices that only have primary care physicians (“PC-only practices) and those who receive primary care in typically larger multispecialty practices that integrate primary care and other specialist physicians. We focus on individuals who move from one HRR to another, and use changes in practice type associated with the move to identify effects of practice type, controlling for individual and geographic characteristics, and time trends. We find that receiving primary care in a PC-only practice is associated with an increase of $341 per year in total spending. This is primarily associated with higher rates of hospitalization and post-acute care use. PC-only practices are also associated with higher rates of AHRQ Prevention Quality Indicators, suggesting a possibility of lower quality care. Overall, these results suggest that larger, multispecialty practices may be able to improve the efficiency, and lower the overall cost, of care for Medicare recipients.

Coffee and Conversation
2026-04-06 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | CCPR Break Room
Join CCPR affiliates for coffee and bagels from Noah’s Bagels, and take the opportunity to get to know one another in a casual setting.
Coffee and Conversation is held Mondays at 10:00 AM in the CCPR Break Room.
This week’s session will be hosted by Professor Felipe Goncalves, who will be there to guide the conversation, share insights, and connect with attendees in an informal setting.

Adriana Lleras-Muney, UCLA, "The Impact of Medicare’s Introduction on Life Expectancy"
2026-04-08 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Room 4240A, 4th Floor, Public Affairs Building, 337 Charles Young Dr., LA, CA 90095
Biography: Adriana Lleras-Muney is a Professor of Economics in the Department of Economics at UCLA. She received her Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University and was an assistant professor of economics at Princeton University before moving to UCLA. She is an associated editor for the Journal of Health Economics, and she serves on the board editors of the American Economic Review and Demography. She served as a permanent member of the Social Sciences and Population Studies Study Section at the National Institute of Health, and was an elected member of the American Economic Association Executive committee. In 2017 Lleras-Muney won the Presidential Early Career Awards for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). Lleras-Muney’s research examines the relationships between socioeconomic status and health, with a particular focus on education, income and policy. Her most recent work investigates the long-term impact of government policies on children by analyzing the effects of programs like the Mother’s Pension program and the Civilian Conservation Corps, implemented during the first half of the 20th century. Her work has been published in leading journals such as the American Economic Review, Econometrica, The Review of Economic Studies and the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

The Impact of Medicare’s Introduction on Life Expectancy

This paper estimates the causal effects of Medicare on mortality rates and life expectancy among the program’s early recipients. We construct a new dataset of more than 18 million individuals observed in the 1940 census linked to a death record in the FamilyTree database at FamilySearch. We use Medicare’s introduction in 1966 to identify its average treatment effects using three pre-specified approaches: a design based on a simple theoretical model of cohort mortality, an interrupted time-series design, and a staggered difference-in-differences design. All three show that Medicare increases life expectancy at age 65 for men born between 1885 and 1915 by an average of one year. Medicare’s effects on life expectancy at age 65 are larger for cohorts with more potential years of exposure but similar for groups of high and low socio-economic status. The effects for women are not robust across methods and specifications.

Coffee and Conversation
2026-04-13 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | CCPR Break Room
Join CCPR affiliates for coffee and bagels from Noah’s Bagels, and take the opportunity to get to know one another in a casual setting.
Coffee and Conversation is held Mondays at 10:00 AM in the CCPR Break Room.
This week’s session will be hosted by Professor Ian Lundberg, who will be there to guide the conversation, share insights, and connect with attendees in an informal setting.

Course Release and Seed Grant Talks
2026-04-15 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Room 4240A, 4th Floor, Public Affairs Building, 337 Charles Young Dr., LA, CA 90095
“Immigration Enforcement in the First Nine Months of the Second Trump Administration”

Seed Grant Recipient: Graeme Blair
Professor of Political Science

Biography: Graeme Blair is a professor of political science at UCLA and faculty affiliate in statistics and the California Center for Population Research. Blair is Co-Director of the Deportation Data Project. He studies state violence and how to make social science more credible, ethical, and useful. Blair’s book Research Design in the Social Sciences was published in 2023 by Princeton University Press and won the best book award from the American Political Science Association Experiments Section. Blair’s second book, Crime, Insecurity, and Community Policing, was published in 2024 by Cambridge University Press in the Studies in Comparative Politics series. His articles are published in journals including Science, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, Journal of the American Statistical Association, and Political Analysis. Blair’s statistical software, including DeclareDesign, has been downloaded over a million times. He is the recipient of awards including the Leamer-Rosenthal Prize for Open Social Science and the Society for Political Methodology best statistical software award.

Abstract: The number of deportations from within the United States, away from the border, increased by a factor of 4.6 during the first nine months of the second Trump administration (the period for which we have detailed data). That increase reflects the following key trends: First, ICE arrests quadrupled, including both street arrests and transfers from criminal custody to ICE immigration custody. ICE street arrests (i.e. arrests not at jails) went up by over a factor of eleven. Street arrests at this order of magnitude are a new phenomenon. For both types of arrests, ICE was much less likely to target people with criminal convictions. These changes led to over a sevenfold increase in arrests of people without criminal convictions. Second, the quadrupling (4x) of arrests resulted in an even larger rise (4.6x) in deportations because of increased detention space and decreased releases. The administration roughly tripled the number of detention beds used for people arrested within the United States. That capacity increase was a result both of new funding (for new detention centers and more beds in existing detention centers) and of a decrease in arrests at the border. Once arrested, few were released. Release within 60 days of arrest, already rare in the last six months of the Biden administration (16%), became almost nonexistent (3%). The rate of deportation within two months of initial detention rose by about a quarter, from 55% to 69%; the declining release rate accounted for most of that increase. Perhaps because of the lower release rate, voluntary departures (which are rare compared to removals) increased by 21 times.

“The Consequences of Receiving—and of Being Denied—an Abortion on Women’s Physical and Mental Health”

Seed Grant Recipient: Juliana Londono-Velez
Assistant Professor of Economics

Biography: Juliana Londoño-Vélez is an applied microeconomist. Her research focuses on how tax and social policies can reduce poverty and inequality and promote upward mobility in Latin America.

Abstract: This paper estimates the causal effects of being denied an abortion on women’s physical and mental health. We exploit Colombia’s tutela system, which allows women to petition judges to compel insurers and providers to deliver timely abortion care. Linking all abortion-related tutelas to comprehensive administrative health records, we leverage the random assignment of cases to judges with differing leniency in an instrumental-variables design. Abortion denial sharply reduces access to abortion services. Consistent with the importance of timely care, women who seek abortions in the second or third trimester face substantially higher medical risks—including hemorrhage, uterine perforation or damage, and septicemia—than women who seek care in the first trimester. We find no evidence that obtaining an abortion worsens women’s mental health. By contrast, abortion denial causes large and persistent increases in mental-health diagnoses and psychotropic medication use, increases physical morbidity, and leads to sustained growth in health-care utilization, including emergency department visits. Finally, abortion denial reduces subsequent contraceptive use.

“The China Syndrome Shock and Family Dynamics: Investigating Effects on Marriage Rates, Marital Sorting, and Fertility”

Course Release Recipient: Daniel Haanwinckel
Professor of Economics

Biography: Daniel Haanwinckel is an Assistant Professor of Economics at UCLA. His research primarily focuses on the determinants of wages, unemployment, underemployment, and worker-firm sorting. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley in 2019.

Abstract TBA

USC/UCLA Workshop on Families and Inequality (WFI)
2026-04-17
Led by Professors Megan Sweeney (UCLA) and Daniela Urbina (USC) and co-hosted by the USC Department of Sociology, the UCLA Family Working Group, and the California Center for Population Research (CCPR).

The event is tailored to graduate students conducting research on families and inequality, with the goal of sharing works-in-progress and connecting with fellow researchers and faculty working in these areas. Note that no affiliation with USC/UCLA is required to participate in the event. The deadline for Submissions is Monday, March 2nd, 2026.

All submissions must be made through this Google Form link. Authors are asked to submit an extended abstract of 2-4 pages. Abstracts must be sufficiently detailed to allow the session organizer to judge the merits of the paper, and should consist of a statement of the research question, the data and research methods, and preliminary findings. For further details about the event and submission process, please see the attached flyer. If you have additional questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to Megan Sweeney (msweeney@soc.ucla.edu), Hsiu-yu Yang (hsiuyu@ucla.edu), or Maureen Cowhey (mcowhey@g.ucla.edu).

Coffee and Conversation
2026-04-20 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | CCPR Break Room
Join CCPR affiliates for coffee and bagels from Noah’s Bagels, and take the opportunity to get to know one another in a casual setting.
Coffee and Conversation is held Mondays at 10:00 AM in the CCPR Break Room.
This week’s session will be hosted by Professor Yotam Shem-Tov who will be there to guide the conversation, share insights, and connect with attendees in an informal setting.

Maya Rossin-Slater, Stanford University, "Birth Centers and Maternal and Infant Health"
2026-04-22 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Room 4240A, 4th Floor, Public Affairs Building, 337 Charles Young Dr., LA, CA 90095
Biography: Maya Rossin-Slater is an Associate Professor of Health Policy at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is also a Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Economic and Policy Research (SIEPR), a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and a Research Affiliate at the Institute of Labor Economics (IZA). She received her Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University, and her BA in Economics and Statistics from the University of California at Berkeley. Rossin-Slater’s research includes work in health, public, and labor economics. She focuses on issues in maternal, child, and family well-being, health disparities, and public policies and other factors affecting disadvantaged populations in the United States and other developed countries. She is the recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the American Economic Association’s Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession Elaine Bennett Research Prize (awarded to recognize outstanding research in any field of economics by a woman not more than ten years beyond her PhD).

Birth Centers and Maternal and Infant Health

Abstract: The number of births at birth centers–freestanding medical facilities equipped to perform low-risk vaginal deliveries–has more than doubled over the past decade in the US. Interest in their usage increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, and has continued to grow since. Moreover, the large racial disparities in maternal health outcomes have prompted advocates to encourage Black women in particular to consider birth centers for their perinatal care. To date, however, there is limited evidence on the causal impacts of access to birth centers on maternal and infant health outcomes, or disparities within them. We provide novel evidence on the impact of access to birth centers on maternal and infant health outcomes. We collect new data on birth centers from several industry organizations as well as the National Plan & Provider Enumeration System of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, and use nearly two decades of restricted-use individual-level birth records data from the National Vital Statistics System to study these questions. We examine the impacts of county-level access to birth centers on pregnancy, delivery, and infant health outcomes, as well as on differences in who uses them between mothers from different racial and educational groups.

Coffee and Conversation
2026-04-27 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | CCPR Break Room
Join CCPR affiliates for coffee and bagels from Noah’s Bagels, and take the opportunity to get to know one another in a casual setting.
Coffee and Conversation is held Mondays at 10:00 AM in the CCPR Break Room.
This week’s session will be hosted by Professor Naomi Sugie, who will be there to guide the conversation, share insights, and connect with attendees in an informal setting.

Student Practice Talks (PAA)
2026-04-29 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Room 4240A, 4th Floor, Public Affairs Building, 337 Charles Young Dr., LA, CA 90095
If you are presenting at PAA and would like to give a practice talk at CCPR, please complete the PAA 2026 Practice Talks form by Friday, April 3. The session will be held on Wednesday, April 29, from 12:00–1:15 PM. This will be a great opportunity to rehearse your presentation and receive feedback before the meeting.
After the form closes, we will follow up with participants regarding scheduling and additional details.

Coffee and Conversation
2026-05-04 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | CCPR Break Room
Join CCPR affiliates for coffee and bagels from Noah’s Bagels, and take the opportunity to get to know one another in a casual setting.
Coffee and Conversation is held Mondays at 10:00 AM in the CCPR Break Room.
This week’s session will be hosted by UCLA Dean and Vice Provost Brian Kite who will be there to guide the conversation, share insights, and connect with attendees in an informal setting.

PAA 2026
2026-05-06 - 2026-05-09 | St. Louis, Missouri America’s Center
Please see the CCPR Affiliate PAA Schedule Here.

PAA Reception
2026-05-08 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York)
Please RSVP here for the upcoming joint PAA Reception:

Friday, May 8, 2026 | 6:00 – 8:30 PM (Local)

Marriott St. Louis Grand | 800 Washington Ave, St. Louis, MO 63101 | Room L4

Participating Universities: University of California, Los Angeles, University of Washington, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Brown University

Coffee and Conversation
2026-05-11 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | CCPR Break Room
Join CCPR affiliates for coffee and bagels from Noah’s Bagels, and take the opportunity to get to know one another in a casual setting.
Coffee and Conversation is held Mondays at 10:00 AM in the CCPR Break Room.
This week’s session will be hosted by Professor Wei-Hsin Yu who will be there to guide the conversation, share insights, and connect with attendees in an informal setting.

Dave Kirk, University of Pennsylvania, "The Rideshare Revolution and Racial Disparities in Police Stops"
2026-05-13 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Room 4240A, 4th Floor, Public Affairs Building, 337 Charles Young Dr., LA, CA 90095
Biography: Dave Kirk is Professor and Department Chair in the Department of Criminology and Research Associate of the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania. He received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago and previously served on the faculties at the University of Oxford, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Maryland. Kirk’s research agenda is primarily organized around three interrelated themes: the causes and consequences of cynicism and distrust of the police and the law, solutions to criminal recidivism, and the causes and consequences of gun violence. He is also interested in the implications of the rise of the sharing economy for crime and public safety. He currently serves as an Associate Editor of Criminology.

The Rideshare Revolution and Racial Disparities in Police Stops

Abstract: Racial disparities in police stops remain a central concern in social science research. While prior explanations emphasize differences by race in driving exposure, behavior, and vehicle characteristics as well as variation in the deployment of police and potential racial bias, one overlooked factor is the rapid expansion of ridesharing. Because ridesharing substitutes for private vehicle trips, its growth may alter the risk set of individuals exposed to discretionary traffic enforcement. This study combines administrative records of traffic stops by the Chicago Police Department, use-of-force reports, and comprehensive rideshare trip data from 2019–2024. I construct district–month panels of police stops and use of force incidents by race and estimate negative binomial models with district and month fixed effects to assess whether increases in rideshare activity are associated with differential changes in police contact across racial groups. Preliminary results suggest that increases in rideshare activity are associated with a narrowing of Black-White disparities in police stops. Use of force analyses show similar patterns. These findings suggest that rideshare expansion may narrow racial disparities in police contact and uses of force by altering the risk set of drivers exposed to traffic enforcement.

Coffee and Conversation
2026-05-18 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | CCPR Break Room
Join CCPR affiliates for coffee and bagels from Noah’s Bagels, and take the opportunity to get to know one another in a casual setting.
Coffee and Conversation is held Mondays at 10:00 AM in the CCPR Break Room.
This week’s session will be hosted by Professor Onyebuchi Arah, who will be there to guide the conversation, share insights, and connect with attendees in an informal setting.

Bussarawan “Puk” Teerawichitchainan, National University of Singapore (NUS) [HOLD]
2026-05-18 14:00 - 15:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
The Southeast Asian Studies Center (CSEAS) has invited Bussarawan “Puk” Teerawichitchainan to give a talk at UCLA on Monday, May 18. Puk is a demographer at the National University of Singapore (NUS) spending this academic year at the CASBS in Stanford:

https://casbs.stanford.edu/people/bussarawan-teerawichitchainan

Her talk will be about her project on aging in Singapore and Thailand.

Michael Lens, UCLA, "Where the Hood At? Fifty Years of Change in Black Neighborhoods"
2026-05-20 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Room 4240A, 4th Floor, Public Affairs Building, 337 Charles Young Dr., LA, CA 90095
Biography: Michael Lens is Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, Chair of the Luskin Undergraduate Programs, and Associate Faculty Director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Professor Lens’ research and teaching explore the potential of public policy to address housing market inequities that lead to negative outcomes for low-income families and communities of color. This research involves zoning and land use, segregation, housing subsidies, and eviction. Professor Lens regularly publishes this work in leading academic journals and his research has won awards from the Journal of the American Planning Association and Housing Policy Debate. His book Where the Hood At: Fifty Years of Change in Black Neighborhoods, was published in November 2024 by the Russell Sage Foundation. (Amazon) (Russell Sage – use promo code Lens for 20% off). In ongoing research, Professor Lens is using microdata to study housing mobility, whether and how accessory dwelling units are affecting housing costs, and how planning reforms in California are achieving fair housing outcomes.

Where the Hood At? Fifty Years of Change in Black Neighborhoods

Abstract: Substantial gaps exist between Black Americans and other racial and ethnic groups in the U.S., most glaringly Whites, across virtually all quality-of-life indicators. Despite strong evidence that neighborhood residence affects life outcomes, we lack a comprehensive picture of Black neighborhood conditions and how they have changed over time. In Where the Hood At? urban planning and public policy scholar Michael C. Lens examines the characteristics and trajectories of Black neighborhoods across the U.S. over the fifty years since the Fair Housing Act. Hip hop music was born out of Black neighborhoods in the 1970s and has evolved alongside them. In Where the Hood At? Lens uses rap’s growth and influence across the country to frame discussions about the development and conditions of Black neighborhoods. Lens finds that social and economic improvement in Black neighborhoods since the 1970s has been slow. However, how well Black neighborhoods are doing varies substantially by region. Overall, Black neighborhoods in the South are doing well and growing quickly. Black neighborhoods in the Midwest and the Rust Belt, on the other hand, are particularly disadvantaged. The welfare of Black neighborhoods is related not only to factors within neighborhoods, such as the unemployment rate, but also to characteristics of the larger metropolitan area, such as overall income inequality. Lens finds that while gentrification is increasingly prevalent, it is growing slowly, and is not as pressing an issue as public discourse would make it seem. Instead, concentrated disadvantage is by far the most common and pressing problem in Black neighborhoods.

AI Workflow in Research: Emerging Challenges and Opportunities
2026-05-27 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
Panelists: Gilbert Gee, Mark Handcock, and Ian Lundberg

Join us for a discussion of AI in research! CCPR affiliates from UCLA’s Departments of Community Health Sciences, Statistics and Data Science, and Sociology will share their perspectives on the practical, ethical, and methodological implications of integrating AI into population research. This event is open to all members of the UCLA community. We look forward to a vibrant and timely conversation.

Coffee and Conversation
2026-06-01 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | CCPR Break Room
Join CCPR affiliates for coffee and bagels from Noah’s Bagels, and take the opportunity to get to know one another in a casual setting.
Coffee and Conversation is held Mondays at 10:00 AM in the CCPR Break Room.
This week’s session will be hosted by Professor Molly Fox, who will be there to guide the conversation, share insights, and connect with attendees in an informal setting.

Mare Student Lecture
2026-06-03 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | Room 4240A, 4th Floor, Public Affairs Building, 337 Charles Young Dr., LA, CA 90095
