Population Council Knowledge Commons Essays: Covid-19 and the Global Demographic Academic Journal: Population and Research Agenda Development Review 2-1-2021 Covid-19 and the Global Demographic Research Agenda Landis MacKellar Population Council Rachel Friedman Population Council Follow this and additional works at: https://knowledgecommons.popcouncil.org/series_pdr_essays-covid How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! Recommended Citation MacKellar, Landis and Rachel Friedman, eds. Covid-19 and the Global Demographic Research Agenda. New York: Population Council, 2021. This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the Population Council. Population and Development Review seeks to advance knowledge of the relationships between population and social, economic, and environmental change and provides a forum for discussion of related issues of public policy. FOUNDING EDITOR Paul Demeny EDITOR Landis MacKellar MANAGING EDITOR Rachel Friedman EDITORIAL COMMITTEE Landis MacKellar, Chair Sonalde Desai Ann K. Blanc Rachel Friedman John Bongaarts Dennis Hodgson John Casterline Geoffrey McNicoll EDITORIAL STAFF Joyce Altman, Copy Editor James DeGroat, Production Manager ADVISORY BOARD Alaka Basu Massimo Livi Bacci Ethel Churchill Wolfgang Lutz David Coleman Carolyn Makinson Paul Demeny Cheikh Mbacké Richard A. Easterlin Xizhe Peng Susan Greenhalgh Samuel H. Preston Charlotte Höhn Vaclav Smil S. Ryan Johansson Dirk van de Kaa Ronald D. Lee James Vaupel Population and Development Review (ISSN 0098-7921 [print]; 1728-4457 [online]) is published quarterly by Wiley Periodicals LLC on behalf of the Population Council. Population and Development Review Population Council One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza New York, New York 10017 USA Published February 2021. Suggested citation: MacKellar, Landis and Rachel Friedman, eds. Covid-19 and the Global Demographic Research Agenda. New York: Population Council, 2021. COVID-19 AND THE GLOBAL DEMOGRAPHIC RESEARCH AGENDA Landis MacKellar Rachel Friedman Editors POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW ESSAYS POPULATION COUNCIL New York THIS PAGE LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK. CONTENTS Introduction 1 LANDIS MACKELLAR RACHEL FRIEDMAN Coronavirus, Cohorts, and International Demography 3 KEERA ALLENDORF Covid-19 Global Demographic Research Needs? Replacing Speculative Commentaries with Robust Cross-national Comparisons 8 EVA BEAUJOUAN Who Is Doing the Research? The Implications of the Pandemic for Researchers in the Population Sciences 15 ANN K. BLANC SANYUKTA MATHUR STEPHANIE R. PSAKI A Covid Agenda from the Perspective of Adolescent Girls and Young Women 23 JUDITH BRUCE Demographic Contributions to Policymaking during the Pandemic 28 SONALDE DESAI What Demographers Need—and What the World Needs from Demographers—in Response to Covid-19 33 JESSICA Y. HO Assessing the Demographic Consequences of the Covid-19 Pandemic 37 EMILY KLANCHER MERCHANT POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW | ESSAYS (FEBRUARY 2021) Rethinking the Role of Demographers in Times of Crisis 42 THOAI D. NGO STEPHANIE R. PSAKI Covid-19 Aftermath and Population Science’s Research Agenda 47 ALBERTO PALLONI Issues of Demographic Data Collection during Covid-19 and Its Aftermath 54 EDUARDO L.G. RIOS-NETO Family Demography in the Post-Covid Era 59 CLÉMENTINE ROSSIER Covid-19 and the Opportunity for a Demographic Research Reset 64 ZEBA SATHAR Demography Beyond the Foot 68 JENNY TRINITAPOLI Implications of the Covid-19 Pandemic for Economic and Demographic Research 73 FRANK-BORGE WIETZKE Covid-19: A Tsunami That Amplifies Existing Trends in Demographic Research 77 EMILIO ZAGHENI The Influence of the Covid-19 Pandemic on the Study of Macro-social Determinants of Population Health and Mortality 83 ZHONGWEI ZHAO POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW | ESSAYS (FEBRUARY 2021) Introduction LANDIS MACKELLAR RACHEL FRIEDMAN THE FIELD OF POPULATION STUDIES that Population and Development Review serves has responded briskly to Covid-19, with webinars, virtual conferences, special issues, and more. Our attitude at PDR was to take a deep breath and a look around to see which way the wind blew. Now, of course, there has been ample time to know with confidence which way it blows: the Covid-19 crisis and its aftermath will be with us all around the world for many years to come. Implications for geopolitics, mac- roeconomies, labor, financial, and commodity markets, the environment, technology and innovation, health care systems, gender, racial and ethnic inequality, and more will be profound and durable. As will effects on the core interests of demography: mortality, fertility, migration, urbanization, family and social structure, and the resulting implications for socioeconomic, envi- ronmental, and technological regimes. Much peer-reviewed research on Covid-19 published in journals like PDR will take months or years to complete. Yet, it became increasingly clear to us in the weeks following the onset of the pandemic that we could offer an alternate kind of scholarly space to explore current and potential impacts of the virus, an essay space. So, we invited a group of recent PDR authors and Population Council researchers to respond to the following question: How do you see Covid-19 shaping global demographic research needs over the next five to ten years? We were rewarded with 16 wide-ranging essays covering much ground in few words. These thoughtful reflections offer a time capsule of sorts on current thinking in the field. Some common themes emerged: calls for more interdisciplinary col- laboration and investment in high-quality data, for example, and reflections on demography’s role when it comes to issues of inequality and governance. Researchers’ interests are naturally revealed. While some focus on needs and opportunities in terms of data and analysis, others are concerned with future generations of demographers and their research priorities. There is some broad scope overlap, but each essay offers a distinct vantage point from which to view the future of demographic research. POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW | ESSAYS (FEBRUARY 2021) 1 https://doi.org/10.31899/pdr1.1016 2 INTRODUCTION Moving to specifics, a number of contributors call for better data, includ- ing data from innovative sources and approaches. A particular impact cited is that Covid-19 has disrupted plans for the 2020 census round. There is a sentiment that demographers should see themselves not merely as produc- ers of data consumed by researchers in related disciplines such as economics, sociology, and public health. Enhanced collaboration is a theme that runs throughout the contributions. Since Covid-19 is similar in certain ways to other adverse life events (illness, divorce, job loss) studied by family de- mographers, the pandemic might also push the interdisciplinary life-course approach more firmly to the center of demography. Since the pandemic may undo decades of progress in advancing gender equality, its impact on reproductive health, even the structural shift toward lower fertility in many developing countries, deserves attention. The issue of research transparency as a strategy for combating the grow- ing mistrust and politicization of science is raised. So, too, is the importance of comparative research, especially at the international level, to disentangle the effects of the disease itself from underlying social conditions and re- sponses, not only in public health narrowly speaking, but in governance more broadly. There are issues of how statistics in our data-driven world are being interpreted through cognitive and moral frameworks, population-wide and at individual and personal levels. Demographers have a responsibility not only to help the public better understand and interpret the statistics being disseminated at a frantic pace, but also to reflect on how they themselves are affected by these data. While some contributors look outward—data needs, new methods of dealing with them—some look inward to reflect on the field itself. Who will be producing the needed demographic research? Gender gaps are likely emerging as the pandemic disproportionately affects women at the peak of their research productivity, and their students, with long-term impacts. International graduate study, heavily concentrated in the United States and Europe, is being disrupted. The global scope of research may narrow due to increased difficulty of fieldwork. As the need for field-based research grows, there is risk that it becomes more difficult and hence less attractive for re- searchers starting out. We look forward to revisiting the issues raised in these essays in the years to come, and to reevaluating their global impact on demography and demographers. Even more, we look forward to the day when the most acute and painful phase of this pandemic is behind us—when we can finally, fully exhale that deep breath. Coronavirus, Cohorts, and International Demography KEERA ALLENDORF IN THE SHORT TERM, the pandemic presents a profound period effect. In 2020, as the novel coronavirus spread and mortality rose, governments closed bor- ders, public events evaporated, and economic hardship skyrocketed. Steep age effects of the pandemic were also rapidly apparent. The risk of dying of Covid-19 is dramatically higher among the elderly and especially low among young children. Yet, when asked to consider how Covid-19 may shape future demo- graphic research needs, my mind kept turning to cohort effects, the diagonal axis of demography’s time trio. I fear the pandemic will adversely shape the composition and research