2006 Annual Report
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OPR OPR Annual Report 2006 Office of Population Research Princeton University Office of Population Research Princeton University Wallace Hall, Princeton, NJ 08544 Phone: 609.258.4870 Research Fax: 609.258.1039 Seminars Publications Email: [email protected] Training Website: opr.princeton.edu Course Offerings Alumni Directory OPR Office of Population Research Princeton University Annual Report 2006 Table of Contents From the Director ......................................................................2 In Memoriam ............................................................................4 OPR Staff and Students ............................................................5 Center for Research on Child Wellbeing..................................10 Center for Health and Wellbeing ............................................12 Center for Migration and Development ..................................14 OPR Financial Support............................................................16 OPR Library ............................................................................18 OPR Seminars ........................................................................20 OPR Research..........................................................................21 Children and Families ................................................................21 Data and Methods ....................................................................24 Health and Wellbeing ................................................................25 Migration and Urbanization ......................................................37 Social Inequality ........................................................................39 OPR Professional Activities ....................................................48 2006 Publications ....................................................................57 Working Papers ..........................................................................57 Publications and Papers..............................................................59 Training in Demography at Princeton ....................................77 Ph.D. Program ..........................................................................77 Departmental Degree in Specialization in Population........................77 Joint-Degree Program ................................................................77 Certificate in Demography ........................................................78 Training Resources ....................................................................78 Courses ......................................................................................79 Recent Graduates ......................................................................85 Graduate Students......................................................................86 Alumni Directory ....................................................................91 Princeton University 1 F ROM THE D IRECTOR I am delighted to use this space to feature three of our HiTOPS, a local adolescent reproductive health clinic. junior faculty associated who were just promoted to She currently serves on the Lamaze International associate professor with continuing tenure. We are Certification Council and has also done work with extremely proud of Elizabeth Armstrong, Scott Lynch, National Advocates for Pregnant Women, the Coalition and Devah Pager. for Improving Maternity Services, and Physicians for Reproductive Choice and Health. The frequent requests Elizabeth Armstrong has a very ambitious and expansive she receives from groups to consult with them or to assist research agenda. She manages to span a wide range of with amici curiae briefs or efforts to combat unfavorable methodologies as well as substantive areas of interest in legislation attest to the policy relevance of her work to her work, which is positioned at the intersection of those in the field. sociology and public health and policy issues. Her first book on drinking during pregnancy and fetal alcohol Scott Lynch’s research interests are both substantive syndrome changed our understanding of the problem. and methodological. Much of his current substantive Her work on risk and decision-making during pregnancy research focuses on the health consequences of is particularly exciting; she will continue to make major socioeconomic and racial inequality, with a particular contributions to the framing of risks and choices in focus on how such inequality translates into health reproductive health care. She brings to that work a deep inequalities across the life course of individuals and understanding of the culture and social context in across time for society as a whole. His work on which women and doctors make choices about prenatal socioeconomic inequalities in health has shown that the testing, mode of delivery, etc. Armstrong’s work goes association between education and health is not static beyond a quantitative assessment of risk to understand across time, and that ignoring the temporal dynamics the significant (if often unacknowledged) role of values, of the relationship produces misleading results. His norms and culture in shaping clinical decision-making. research interest in racial inequalities in health is Her project on agenda setting around disease demon- relatively new and is currently funded by a grant from strates how interdisciplinary her work can be; political NICHD. He is currently investigating (1) whether scientists, sociologists, and health policy analysts all find race-based health inequalities have decreased over the real substantive theoretical and empirical contributions last 30 years, (2) whether socioeconomic status-based in the project. She has a good eye for research questions health inequalities have decreased over the same period, that are not only interesting theoretically, but that have and (3) whether an increasing or decreasing proportion real policy significance. Armstrong has had a solid track of the racial gap in health is explained by remaining record in winning external support for her research, socioeconomic inequalities between blacks and whites. including a collaborative grant from the National Preliminary results indicate that race-based health Science Foundation and a prestigious Investigator in inequalities have, in fact, decreased over the last Health Policy Research award from the Robert Wood 30 years, while socioeconomic status-based health Johnson Foundation. In addition to her research and inequalities—by some measures—have increased. teaching and University citizenship, she manages to find At the same time, an increasing proportion of the time to bring her expertise to bear outside of academia. remaining black-white gap in health is attributable to For three years, she served on the board of directors of non-economic factors. Lynch’s current methodological 2 Office of Population Research Annual Report 2006 interests are in Bayesian statistics and estimation using Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation methods generally, and, more specifically, in the application of these methods to demographic multistate life table estimation. Over the past several years, Lynch has developed methods (and software) for both panel and cross-sectional data that address two key limitations to traditional multistate life table generation methods: the difficulty with including covariates in estimating life tables for subpopulations, and the inability to produce interval estimates of multistate quantities when sample data are used. Regarding his broader methodological interest in Bayesian statistics, Lynch has recently finished a book entitled Introduction to Bayesian Statistics and Estimation for Social Scientists to be published in July by and the American Sociological Review, Pager’s book, Springer. Overall, Lynch has published more than two MARKED: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of dozen papers in the top journals in his fields in these Mass Incarceration, was just published by the University and related areas, including Demography, Sociological of Chicago Press. Pager’s ambitious research agenda has Methodology, Sociological Methods & Research, the been supported by grants from the National Science Journal of Health and Social Behavior, the Journals of Foundation and the National Institute of Justice. She Gerontology, and Social Forces. Additionally, he has given has recently been honored with several early career more than 50 invited lectures—including statistical awards, including the NIH Mentored Research Scientist seminars—and professional presentations in these Award (K01), the NSF CAREER Award, and the general areas since arriving at Princeton in 2001. William T. Grant Scholar’s Award. With this support, Devah Pager’s research program focuses on racial Pager plans to extend her work on racial discrimination inequality, with an emphasis on the institutions and inequality by drawing together insights and methods affecting racial stratification, including schools, labor developed in psychology, political science, and economics markets, and the criminal justice system. In her work to form a better understanding of the mechanisms she has sought to develop and deploy a range of underlying racial bias and discrimination, and to methods to examine of patterns of racial inequality, examine public attitudes relevant to a range of policy with the goal of better understanding the varied social responses. In addition to her academic work, Pager is and structural forces that reinforce and maintain deeply committed to public