Workshop: Bayesian Concepts for Data Analysis

4240 Public Affairs Bldg

"Workshop: Bayesian Concepts for Data Analysis"

Instructor: Michael Tzen

Content:
This 1 hour workshop will provide a sampling of introductory concepts for bayesian analysis. We will use Bayes Rule (and its implications) to think about data analysis. When used as a framework to model phenomenon, the analyst gets to work with 4 useful distributions: the prior, posterior, prior predictive, & posterior predictive. We will predict what clothing size 2Chainz wears. We'll also look at the Gompertz Rule from demography. In both examples, the bayesian framework allows us to clearly express the estimand, information from data, information from prior knowledge, and the estimator.

This workshop is the first of a two part series. The first workshop is conceptual while the second workshop will focus on software. The date for the second workshop is TBD.

Please RSVP Here:

https://goo.gl/forms/CF4wuaobfqpug9Js1

CCPR 2018 PAA Practice Session

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

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 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.
*Co-sponsored with the California Policy Lab 

Susan Cassels, UC Santa Barbara

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 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.

Sarah Baird, George Washington University

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 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.

Workshop: Bayesian Software for Data Analysis

4240 Public Affairs Bldg

Instructor: Michael Tzen Content: We will implement the Gompertz Rule and the 2Chainz examples through software commands. Please bring a laptop. We will use the R package `brms` which provides a friendly front end to STAN. This workshop is the followup to Part 1: Bayesian Concepts for Data Analysis. The abstract and slides for part 1 […]

Ethnic/Racial Characteristics and Inequality of Opportunity in Mexico

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 […]

Homelessness Workshop

4240 Public Affairs Bldg

Homelessness Workshop Organizers: Randall Kuhn and Till von Wachter May 21-24, 2018 4240 Public Affairs Building In Los Angeles County, homelessness is a crisis affecting productivity, safety and health, including that of UCLA students and staff. While individual research groups at UCLA are addressing this crisis, UCLA lacks a coordinated response in terms of research […]

Meeting the Challenge of Homelessness

UCLA NPI Auditorium CHS C8-183

"Meeting the Challenge of Homelessness"

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 Culhane, University of Pennsylvania

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 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.

V. Joseph Hotz, Duke University

CCPR Seminar Room 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 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.

Partnership UCLA Russian Delegation

4240 Public Affairs Bldg

Organizers: Dora Costa, Economics Department June 5-7, 2018 4240 Public Affairs Building Through mutually beneficial partnerships-with our alumni and friends in the professional world, government agencies, and community organizations-the College of Letters & Science has long paved the way for continued leadership, impact and excellence. We have successfully consolidated and strengthened these partnerships, through Partnership […]

First Annual Robert Mare Student Lectureship

4240 Public Affairs Bldg

"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.

Dr. Henry F. Raymond, Rutgers University & UC San Francisco

4240 Public Affairs Bldg

"Sampling Hidden Populations: Respondent Drive Sampling"

Abstract: Dr. Raymond will discuss the background and implementation of Respondent Driven Sampling (RDS) studies which is wide use among hidden populations the world over. He will review the theoretical basis of RDS including what biases RDS analysis corrects for. Dr. Raymond will share some examples of RDS analysis using RDS Analyst.

“The Trouble with Pink and Blue, Gender expression, stigma, and health among U.S. children and adolescents”

4240 Public Affairs Bldg

The Trouble with Pink and Blue, Gender expression, stigma, and health among U.S. children and adolescents

Abstract: 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.

2018-2019 CCPR Welcome and Introductions

4240 Public Affairs Bldg

2018-2019 CCPR Welcome and Introductions

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.

California Center for Population Research 20th Anniversary Research Symposium

Covel Commons UCLA

October 12th, 2018 Covel Commons, UCLA The California Center for Population Research (CCPR) at UCLA was founded in 1998, and thus celebrates its 20-year anniversary in 2018. This is a full day conference covering various topics related to population studies. CCPR Alumna from all over the country will present their current work.