News

A new article published in Demography by Christina Gibson-Davis, Lisa Keister, Lisa Gennetian, and Shuyi Qiu uses Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) data to examine the "role of wealth deprivation across a child’s life course" and the association with high school graduation and college attendance.

A 2025 article published in Demography by DUPRI Scholar Jen'nan Read and DUPRI student Fatima Fairfax has been selected as a a recipient of a 2025 IPUMS Research Award! The IPUMS Research Awards competition honors outstanding research using IPUMS data to advance or deepen our understanding of social and demographic processes. IPUMS looks for papers that use innovative approaches, comparative analyses, and showcase the power of the IPUMS data collections.

Every year, scholars and students from DUPRI present research papers, prepare professional posters, and serve as panel discussants at the Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America. This year's PAA Annual Meeting will take place in St. Louis, Missouri from May 6-9. Below is a list of all DUPRI scholars and students participating in PAA sessions.

Herman Pontzer, Professor of Evolutionary Anthropology and DUPRI Scholar, has been elected a 2025 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

A new article published this month in Social Currents by DUPRI Scholars Lisa Keister and Jim Moody and DUPRI student Shuyi Qiu challenges how researchers and policymakers think about financial well-being, arguing that traditional measures like income or net worth capture only part of the picture. Financial status, the authors contend, is better understood as a complex combination of income sources, assets, and debts that together shape a household’s stability, risk exposure, and long-term opportunities. While past research often treats households with similar income or wealth as equivalent, the study shows that families with the same totals can occupy very different financial positions depending on how their resources are structured.

A new paper from the Moffitt & Caspi Lab published in Psychological Medicine presents replicated evidence showing that people with schizophrenia exhibit a faster pace of whole-body biological aging compared with controls, as measured using a novel neuroimaging biomarker, supporting the hypothesis that schizophrenia is accompanied by accelerated aging.

As a student, Lauren Brinkley‑Rubinstein thought she might work in law enforcement, but she changed her mind when she saw biases in the legal justice system. Now an associate professor at Duke, her work focuses on how incarceration impacts a person’s physical and mental health.

Researchers at the Biodemography of Aging Research Unit (BARU) at Duke University have recently published three interconnected studies that shed new light on how our genes, environment, and history of infections collide to influence the risk of Alzheimer’s disease (AD). By analyzing massive datasets from the UK Biobank, the Health and Retirement Study, and the Alzheimer’s Disease Neuroimaging Initiative (ADNI), this rigorous scientific work moves us closer to personalized prevention strategies for dementia.

Last week’s "Metabolism and Health Across the Lifespan" symposium at Duke highlighted a wide range of ongoing research aimed at understanding how metabolism influences aging, chronic disease, and overall health. Several speakers discussed methods for measuring biological aging, how factors like exercise, fat tissue function, and mitochondrial fitness affect health over time, and the biology behind GLP-1 drugs used in diabetes and weight-management therapies. Three of the featured presenters—Terrie Moffitt, Herman Pontzer, and Heather Whitson—are DUPRI scholars, bringing population science perspectives to metabolic and aging research.

A new article published by DUPRI Scholar Hannah Postel shows that the trajectory of Asian immigration to the United States has been uniquely and profoundly shaped by over a century of shifting federal policies.