Seminar Series

A growing number of persons living beyond age 85 underscore the need for accurate measurement and modeling of mortality at advanced ages. This is also very important issue for making correct forecasts of population aging and related demands for medical services and social support. Earlier studies indicate that exponential growth of mortality with age (Gompertz law) is followed by a period of mortality deceleration with slower rate of growth. This study challenges earlier conclusions with new data and estimates. In this study we used U.S.

Based on subjective survival probability questions in the Health and Retirement Study, we use an econometric model to estimate the determinants of individual-level uncertainty about personal longevity. This model is built around the Modal Response Hypothesis (MRH), a mathematical expression of the idea that survey responses of 0, 50 or 100 percent to probability questions indicate a high level of uncertainty about the relevant probability. We show that subjective survival expectations in 2002 line up very well with realized mortality of the HRS respondents between 2002 and 2010.

Rapid advances in technology and scientific methods stimulated by the sequencing of the human genome have yielded discoveries that begin to uncover the genetic roots of common chronic health conditions. The implications of these discoveries for population health science remain unclear. Three questions central to translating genetic discoveries to population health research are (1) What are the magnitudes of risks that can be predicted using genetic information? (2) Do genetics provide new information over and above family history?

This paper describes how using a gene-environment interaction framework may allow us to understand why health policies often work on some people but not others. A motivating example focuses on tobacco taxation policies in the US. The reduction in tobacco use as a result of taxation has been considered one of the most important public health successes in the past century. However, individuals continue to smoke at high rates and there is evidence of substantial heterogeneity in the responses to taxation.

This paper provides a systematic analysis of identification in linear social networks models. This is both a theoretical and an econometric exercise in that it links identification analysis to a rigorously delineated model of interdependent decisions. We develop a Bayes-Nash equilibrium analysis for interdependent decisions under incomplete information in networks that produces linear strategy profiles of the type conventionally used in empirical work and which nests linear social interactions models as a special case.

The deleterious effects of poverty vis-à-vis mental and physical health are routinely argued to operate, at least in part, via dysregulation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis; although empirical examinations connecting poverty with HPA axis functioning are rare. The timing of poverty represents a particularly neglected aspect of this relationship. This study utilizes prospective data from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) to test how the timing of and cumulative exposure to poverty are associated with awakening cortisol (N=826).

Hans-Peter Kohler, Ph.D. is currently the Frederick J. Warren Professor of Demography in the Department of Sociology, and a Research Associate in the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania. His primary research focuses on fertility and health in developing and developed countries. A key characteristic of this research is the attempt to integrate demographic, economic, sociological and biological approaches in empirical and theoretical models of demographic behavior.

Incarceration research catalogues its direct negative impact on former inmates and their families, though the effects of punishment clearly spill over to affect broader economic and political institutions as well. To further expand the scope of incarceration research, this study examines spillover effects between state-level incarceration rates and the functioning of the U.S. health care system.

ABSTRACT: This paper critically evaluates available data on divorce and the dissolution of cohabiting unions. We find that both vital statistics and retrospective survey data on divorce after 1990 are deeply flawed, and have greatly underestimated recent marital instability. These flawed data led many analysts to conclude that divorce risk has been stable or declining for the past three decades.

ABSTRACT: How does living in a violent environment "get into the minds" of children to affect them as they engage in daily life at home and in school? The research I will discuss develops new methods to identify the causal effect of exposure to incidents of extreme violence in children's neighborhoods. By exploiting the timing of events that occur in children's neighborhoods, this research examines how violence affects children's cognitive functioning, their ability to maintain attention and control impulses, and their performance in school.