California Center for Population Research

Bagel Hour
2025-06-02 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-05-19 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-05-12 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-05-05 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-04-28 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-04-21 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-04-14 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-04-07 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles) and 6 more dates | CCPR Break Room
Join CCPR affiliates for bagels from Noah’s Bagels and get to know one another in a casual setting.
Bagels are served in the CCPR Break Room.

Jens Ludwig, University of Chicago, "Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence"
2025-05-28 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: Jens Ludwig is the Edwin A. and Betty L. Bergman Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, co-director of the National Bureau of Economic Research working group on the economics of crime, and Pritzker Director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab. He helped found the Crime Lab 16 years ago to serve as a sort of R&D partner to the public sector to help address major social problems like gun violence, and has led to nationwide efforts to change policing, community violence intervention, and social programs for youth violence prevention, as well as new data-driven decision tools in use across the entire New York City court system. This work has been published in leading peer-reviewed scientific journals and featured in national news outlets like the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, NPR and PBS News Hour. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and serves on the National Academy of Science’s Committee on Law and Justice.
Unforgiving Places: The Unexpected Origins of American Gun Violence
What if everything we understood about gun violence was wrong?
In 2007, economist Jens Ludwig moved to the South Side of Chicago to research two big questions: Why does gun violence happen, and is there anything we can do about it? Almost two decades later, the answers aren’t what he expected. Unforgiving Places is Ludwig’s revelatory portrait of gun violence in America’s most famously maligned city.
Disproving the popular narrative that shootings are the calculated acts of malicious or desperate people, Ludwig shows how most shootings actually grow out of a more fleeting source: interpersonal conflict, especially arguments. By examining why some arguments turn tragic while others don’t, Ludwig shows gun violence to be more circumstantial—and more solvable—than our traditional approaches lead us to believe.
Drawing on decades of research and Ludwig’s immersive fieldwork in Chicago, including “countless hours spent in schools, parks, playgrounds, housing developments, courtrooms, jails, police stations, police cars, and lots and lots of McDonald’ses,” Unforgiving Places is a breakthrough work at the cutting edge of behavioral economics. As Ludwig shows, progress on gun violence doesn’t require America to solve every other social problem first; it only requires that we find ways to intervene in the places and the ten-minute windows where human behaviors predictably go haywire.

A recording of Jens Ludwig’s presentation may be accessed here.

Jamie Goodwin-White, UCLA "’Citizenship from the outside’: Undocumented immigrants and the making of civic and political life”
2025-05-23 12:00 - 13:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Bunche 10383
Jamie Goodwin-White (Department of Geography UCLA), David Jacobson (Department of Sociology, University of South Florida)
“’Citizenship from the outside’: Undocumented immigrants and the making of civic and political life”.
We argue that profound changes take place regarding citizenship that are not fully captured in scholarly analysis or, for that matter, in public discussion. The challenge is that conventional analytical categories are unable to account for these fundamental changes. If, instead, we view citizenship developments through a civic and social lens–rather than with the assumption of formal legal citizenship as the end-point–the question, what are we missing, becomes more straightforward to address. By adopting a social and civic lens, we argue we can reveal several key characteristics of citizenship that have been obscured by a focus on formal institutions. Citizenship is a dynamic, lived experience shaped by social interactions, cultural practices, and political contestations–even the severe ones proffered by populist leaders. We will discuss, inter alia, the following propositions: 1) Citizenship and rights develop through claims from “outsiders.” 2) The liminal is constitutive, not a marginal, deferred, or an in-between status. We witness, repeatedly, that institutions (notably, but not only, courts) are forced to take account of social and civic practices driven by undocumented migrants. If we think of it in terms of a civic lens, key derivative questions arise–notably, how should we understand “integration” in this context?

Proactive Media Relations Team, UCLA, "Media Relations 101" Workshop
2025-05-14 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles)
Media Relations 101
Description: On May 14, UCLA Media Relations will speak to faculty and students at CCPR on how our team, and the broader Strategic Communications department, supports faculty members and the university in sharing research, expertise and other university news with a broad audience. UCLA media relations works with marketing and communications colleagues across campus and with external media to communicate UCLA news to a local, national and global audience, helping to amplify the university’s core values and help it reach its strategic objectives.

Janet Currie, Princeton University, "Investing in Children to Address the Child Mental Health Crisis"
2025-05-07 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: Janet Currie is the Henry Putnam Professor of Economics and Public Affairs at Princeton University and the co-director of Princeton’s Center for Health and Wellbeing. She also co-directs the Program on Families and Children at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Currie is a pioneer in the economic analysis of child development. Her current research focuses on socioeconomic differences in health and access to health care, environmental threats to health, the important role of mental health, and the long-run impact of health problems in pregnancy and early childhood. Currie is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Medicine, and of the American Academy of Art and Sciences. She will be the President of the American Economic Association in 2024 and has served as the President of the American Society of Health Economics, the Society of Labor Economics, the Eastern Economic Association, and the Western Economic Association. She is the Distinguished CES Fellow in 2023, and a Fellow of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, the Society of Labor Economists, and of the Econometric Society, and has honorary degrees from the University of Lyon and the University of Zurich. She was a NOMIS Distinguished Scientist in 2019, the winner of the 2023 Klaus J. Jacobs Research Prize, one of the top 10 women in Economics by the World Economic Forum in July 2015, and an Alumna of Influence by the University of Toronto in 2012. She has served on the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science, as the Editor of the Journal of Economic Literature, and on the editorial boards of many other journals.

Investing in Children to Address the Child Mental Health Crisis

Abstract: The child mental health crisis has been described as the “defining public health crisis of our time.” This article addresses three myths about the crisis: 1) The idea that the crisis is new; 2) The belief that increases in youth suicide mainly reflect deterioration in children’s underlying mental health; 3) The myth that investments in children have little impact on children’s mental health. In fact, the crisis has existed for decades, youth suicides vary asynchronously with other mental health measures and are impacted by external factors such as firearms legislation, and investments can improve child mental health and prevent suicide.

A recording of Janet Currie’s presentation may be accessed here.

Emma Zang, Yale University, "Life-Course Exposure to State Policy Liberalism Contexts and Later-Life Cognitive Health"
2025-04-30 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: Dr. Emma Zang is an Assistant Professor of Sociology, Biostatistics, and Global Affairs at Yale University. Zang’s research interests lie at the intersection of health and aging, marriage and family, and inequality, with a particular focus on examining these dynamics in both the United States and China. She is also interested in developing and evaluating methods to model trajectories and life transitions, aiming to understand the impact of demographic and socioeconomic inequalities on individuals’ health and well-being from a life course perspective. Her work has appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Sociology, Demography, PNAS, JAMA Internal Medicine, and Nature Human Behavior. Her projects have been funded by the National Institute of Health. Her research has received media coverage from notable outlets in the United States, China, South Korea, India, and Singapore. She has received awards from the American Sociological Association, the National Institute on Aging, the Southern Demographic Association, and Social Science History Association, etc.

“Life-Course Exposure to State Policy Liberalism Contexts and Later-Life Cognitive Health”

Abstract: Polarization in U.S. state policy has driven geographic disparities in population health, but most studies focus on concurrent policy contexts rather than cumulative exposure over the life course. A life course perspective is crucial because individuals experience varied policy environments at different stages, shaping long-term health outcomes, including cognitive health. Using restricted-access data from the Health and Retirement Study (1998–2020) linked to state policy data (1936–2014), this study examines how life-course exposure to state policy liberalism affects later-life cognitive health. We analyze five periods—early childhood (ages 0-5), school age (6-12), adolescence (13-17), transition to adulthood (18-30), and adulthood (31-50)—and their impact on cognitive functioning and impairment risk. We test theories around timing, duration, and sequence of exposure. Findings show that prolonged exposure to liberal policies, especially in early childhood and adulthood, improves cognitive outcomes. Exposure trajectories, particularly increasing liberal policies over time, also enhance cognitive health. These findings highlight the lasting impact of public policy on cognitive health and suggest that supportive policy environments during key life stages can mitigate cognitive decline and reduce disparities.

Emma Zang’s presentation may be accessed here.

Michael Mueller-Smith, University of Michigan, "The Direct and Intergenerational Effects of Criminal History-Based Safety Net Bans in the U.S."
2025-04-23 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: Mike Mueller-Smith is an Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Michigan and Faculty Associate at the Population Studies Center. His research focuses on measuring the scope and prevalence of the criminal justice system in the U.S. as well as its broadly defined impact on the population. He is the Director of the Criminal Justice Administrative Records System (CJARS), a new data infrastructure project joint with the U.S. Census Bureau that seeks to collect and link extensive amounts of criminal justice microdata with social and economic data held at the Census Bureau. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from Columbia University in 2015, and completed a NICHD Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Michigan’s Population Studies Center between 2015-2017.

The Direct and Intergenerational Effects of Criminal History-Based Safety Net Bans in the U.S.

Abstract:

We study the lifetime banning, as introduced by United States Public Law 104-193, of individuals convicted of felony drug offenses after August 22, 1996 from ever receiving future SNAP benefits. Using a regression discontinuity design that leverages CJARS criminal history records with federal administrative and survey data, we estimate the causal impact of safety net assistance bans, finding significant reductions in SNAP benefit take-up, which creates unintentional spillovers to spouses and children and persist long after ban revocations occurred. While we observe limited changes to other adult outcomes, children’s short- and long-run outcomes worsen, especially those impacted at young ages.

A recording of Michael Mueller-Smith’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 (America/Los_Angeles)
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.

PAA Reception
2025-04-11 18:00 - 20:30 (America/New_York) | Marriott Marquis, Beerlab, 901 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC, United States
CCPR will be hosting a joint reception with Michigan, Washington, Brown and Wisconsin-Madison at PAA this year. The reception will take place on Friday, April 11, from 6-8:30 pm EST. Please join us!

Population Association of America 2025 Annual Meeting @ Washington D.C.
2025-04-10 - 2025-04-13

Student Practice Talks (PAA)
2025-04-02 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles)

Eliana La Ferrara, Harvard Kennedy School, "Changing Harmful Norms through Information and Coordination: Experimental Evidence from Somalia"
2025-03-05 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | 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.

Workshop: Paul Lillig, UCLA, "OHRPP and Research at UCLA - A Brief Overview of IRB Function and Responsibilities"
2025-02-26 12:00 - 13:15 (America/Los_Angeles) | 4240 Public Affairs Bldg
Join us for a CCPR workshop on IRB/Human Subject requirements and procedures at UCLA. This event is tailored for graduate students and faculty affiliates; covering the criteria for IRB approval, the submission process for IRB review, and how to determine if IRB review or certification of exemption is required for your research. The workshop will also include a Q&A to address any specific questions or concerns you may have.

An audio recording of Paul Lillig’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 (America/Los_Angeles) | 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.

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 (America/Los_Angeles) | 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.

Workshop: Yiqing Xu, Stanford University, "Factorial Difference-in-Differences"
2025-02-05 12:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Biography: Dr. Xu’s primary research covers political methodology, Chinese politics, and their intersection. He received a PhD in Political Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2016), an MA in Economics from China Center for Economic Research at Peking University (2010) and a BA in Economics from Fudan University (2007). His work has appeared in leading political science journals, including American Political Science Review, American Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and Political Analysis. He has won several professional awards, including the John T. Williams Dissertation Prize from the Society for Political Methodology, the Best Article Award from American Journal of Political Science in 2016, and the Miller Prize (2018, 2020) for the best work appearing in Political Analysis the preceding year. In 2024, he was honored with the Emerging Scholar Award from the Society of Political Methodology and received an honorable mention for the Becky Morton and Tom Carsey Excellence in Mentoring Award. That same year, interflex, R and Stata packages he developed with his team, won the Society’s Best Statistical Software Award.
Factorial Difference-in-Differences
Abstract: In many panel data settings, researchers apply the difference-in-differences (DID) estimator, exploiting cross-sectional variation in a baseline factor and temporal variation in exposure to an event affecting all units. However, the exact estimand is often unspecified and the justification for this method remains unclear. This paper formalizes this empirical approach, which we term factorial DID (FDID), as a research design including its data structure, estimands, and identifying assumptions. We frame it as a factorial design with two factors—the baseline factor G and exposure level Z, and define effect modification and causal moderation as the associative and causal effects of G on the effect of Z, respectively. We show that under standard assumptions, including no anticipation and parallel trends, the DID estimator identifies effect modification but not causal moderation. To identify the latter, we propose an additional factorial parallel trends assumption. Moreover, we reconcile canonical DID as a special case of FDID with an additional exclusion restriction and link causal moderation to G’s conditional effect with another exclusion restriction. We extend our framework to conditionally valid assumptions, clarify regression-based approaches, and illustrate our findings with an empirical example. We offer practical recommendations for FDID applications.

Bear Force One Launch Party
2025-01-29 16:30 - 17:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | 4240 Public Affairs Bldg
Bear Force One is CCPR’s newest, large scale computing resource, available for all our affiliates!
As the refresh solution to our current TS2 service, Bear Force One offers enhanced capabilities designed to support your research with:

– Advanced computing power: A remote-hosted, clustered offering that features high-performance processors and plenty of memory.

– Comprehensive software tooling: A catalog of statistical analysis and data science tools, including Stata, SAS, R/RStudio, and other productivity applications tailored to your needs.

– Seamless accessibility: A service available anytime, anywhere, ensuring smooth operations without relying on your local devices.

Additionally, we’re introducing the DataDen, an external, mountable storage solution here at CCPR! The DataDen is built with advanced security features and redundancy to safeguard your data while minimizing the risk of loss.

We will outline the benefits of using our new resource and how to gain access. Please join us for this amazing event as there will be food, games, and merchandise to give!
