California Center for Population Research

Workshop: Practical Survey Analysis
2018-11-15 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Instructor:
Michael Tzen
Title:
Practical Survey Analysis
Location:
November 15, 2018, 2:00-3:00 PM
4240 Public Affairs Building
CCPR Seminar Room
Content:
We’ll walk thru key steps of a data analysis involving a complex survey design.
Please RSVP below
https://goo.gl/forms/evIP7G8PN0UBG7x72

slides rscript

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
More on Prof. Raftery

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

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.

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
More on Prof. Conley

Workshop: Getting your Computational Tools for Research
2018-10-25 14:00 - 15:00 | CCPR Seminar Room, 4240 Public Affairs Building, Los Angeles, CA, 90095, United States
Instructor:
Michael Tzen
Title:
Getting your Computational Tools for Research
Location:
October 25, 2018, 2:00-3:00 PM
4240 Public Affairs Building
CCPR Seminar Room
Content:
We’ll get you started on Github, Rstudio, Stata, and accessing Hoffman2 (UCLA’s high performance computing cluster).
Please RSVP below
https://goo.gl/forms/W6hkM3bnOjfnYGJw2
slides

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
More on Prof. Ozler

Trans-Pacific Labor Seminar
2018-10-21 - 2018-10-22 | 4240 Public Affairs Bldg
The Trans-Pacific Labor Seminar is part of a conference series that brings together Japanese and U.S. economics scholars. The idea is to foster trans-pacific exchange and collaboration, and usually half of the participants are from Japan and half are U.S. based. The conference is co-sponsored by the International Institute, the Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies, the Social Science Division, the Vice Chancellor for Research Office, and the Japanese Government

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
More on Prof. Hartman

California Center for Population Research 20th Anniversary Research Symposium
2018-10-12 | 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.

California Center for Population Research 20th Anniversary Reception
2018-10-11 | Fowler Museum
October 11, 2018
Fowler Museum, UCLA
Speakers: Randall Kuhn, Anne Pebley, Meredith Phillips, Michael Lens, Moshe Buchinsky, Till von Wachter

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.

"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

Dr. Henry F. Raymond, Rutgers University & UC San Francisco
2018-06-18 13:00 - 16:00 | 4240 Public Affairs Bldg
“Sampling Hidden Populations: Respondent Driven Sampling”
Dr. Henry F. Raymond
Associate Prof. of Epidemiology, Rutgers University & Associate Prof. of Epidemiology and Biostatistics, UC San Francisco
June 18th, 2018
4240 Public Affairs Building
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.

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

Partnership UCLA Russian Delegation
2018-06-05 - 2018-06-07 | 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 UCLA.

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.
Access Podcast Here
More on Prof. Hotz

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.

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

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

Homelessness Workshop
2018-05-21 - 2018-05-24 | 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 or student awareness. To galvanize transdisciplinary research and training, we propose a one-week residency by Prof. Dennis Culhane of the University of Pennsylvania.

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

Workshop: Bayesian Software for Data Analysis
2018-05-17 12:00 - 13:00 | 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 are below.
https://ucla.box.com/s/wof3yur9xs6ofqhirmr2k2op0fv9kj7s
https://ccpr.ucla.edu/event/workshop-bayesian-concepts-for-data-analysis/

rscript writeup

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.
Access Podcast Here
More on Prof. Baird

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

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.
Access Podcast Here
More on Prof. Cassels

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

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”

Workshop: Bayesian Concepts for Data Analysis
2018-04-12 12:00 - 13:00 | 4240 Public Affairs Bldg
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
slides

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
More on Prof. Saez
*Co-sponsored with the Department of Economics and Anderson School of Management and Public Policy and Applied Social Science Seminar (PPASS)
