California Center for Population Research

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.

Bagel Hour
2025-02-03 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-01-27 10:00 - 11:00, 2025-01-06 10:00 - 11:00, 2024-12-09 10:00 - 11:00, 2024-12-02 10:00 - 11:00, 2024-11-18 10:00 - 11:00, 2024-11-04 10:00 - 11:00, 2024-10-28 10:00 - 11:00 and 4 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.

Bear Force One Launch Party
2025-01-29 16:30 - 17:30 | 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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Workshop: Grant Writing
2024-11-20 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Featuring Martha Bailey, Gilbert Gee, Naomi Sugie, and Janet Stein

A recording of this workshop may be accessed here.
The slides of the presentation may be accessed here.

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

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

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

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

How Much Does Health Affect Voter Participation?

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

A Celebration of Judith Seltzer
2024-10-23 16:00 - 17:30 | Sculpture Garden Coral Tree Walk
Join us at Coral Tree Walk for a celebration and reception for CCPR founding member and former director Judith Seltzer’s career!

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

Workshop: Jake Anderson, University of California, Los Angeles, "Transitioning to Industry: Tech Pathways for Academics"
2024-10-17 15:00 - 16:30 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
Description:
Join us for a session on navigating the transition from academia to industry, specifically in tech roles. Led by Jake Anderson, a CCPR trainee from the Economics department who has worked as a Data Science Manager and Senior Data Scientist in San Francisco, this workshop will guide you through reframing academic projects and experience to highlight impact and value. We will discuss the typical tech interview process, covering recruiter interactions, technical screens, and multi-stage interviews. Learn about the distinctions in interview focus across major tech firms like Amazon, Facebook, Uber and Google, and explore the nuances of different roles, job titles, and career tracks. Attendees will gain insights into salary negotiations (including stock and bonuses), team matching, and what to expect in the first few years in industry, including performance evaluations and promotion pathways. This session is a must for those considering a career pivot into tech or looking to better understand the tech hiring landscape!
One recent candidate from a top 10 PhD program who got several industry offers wrote: “Marketing yourself effectively is crucial in tech, yet this is a skill that many economists and other academics lack. Jake brings years of experience and understands how to translate between the academic and industry spaces. My resume got many compliments after Jake overhauled it, and his guidance was critical for securing interviews and internships that ultimately converted into full-time offers. Jake has abundant knowledge on non-econ science roles that many tech economists are unfamiliar with. I highly recommend working with Jake.”

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

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

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

Workshop: CCPR Computing Orientation
2024-10-09 12:00 - 13:15 | 4240A Public Affairs Bldg
A recording of Roger Silanoe’s presentation may be accessed here.
The slides of the presentation may be accessed here.

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

17th Annual All-California Labor Economics Conference.
2024-09-12 - 2024-09-13
UCLA will host the 2024 All-California Labor Economics Conference (ACLEC). We define labor broadly and will consider submissions in a broad set of areas in applied microeconomics. The conference will take place at UCLA on Thursday and Friday, September 12-13, 2024.
Click here for more details.

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

Mare lecture | Johnny Huynh
2024-06-05 12:00 - 13:20
Johnny Huynh is an applied microeconomist specializing in health and labor economics, and his research uses the methods of causal inference to address policy-relevant questions about inequality in health. Johnny will present his paper, “Do Cash Transfers Narrow Health Disparities? Evidence from Veterans with Disabilities.” Johnny will be joining the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice in Fall 2024 as an Assistant Professor. His UCLA thesis is advised by Adriana Lleras-Muney, Kathleen McGarry, and Martha Bailey.
