This course will cover the tools and techniques of program evaluation, and help familiarize students with the various research methods that can be employed to evaluate the effect of policies and innovations. It will also give students the ability to read empirical research in a more critical manner, and help them become more proficient in the use of the STATA statistical software package.
This one semester course discusses emerging issues in the micro-economics of population and development. The course draws on theoretical models to develop scientific hypotheses about important questions in the field and proceeds to discuss how one might subject those hypotheses to empirical testing.
This workshop covers emerging issues in international population health and development including individual and family behavior in developing countries, poverty, inequality, human and financial capital, and health of populations across the globe.
This course examines population, health and environment (PHE) dynamics with a focus on interactions occurring in countries classified as developing or transition economies. Students will gain knowledge of the theoretical and empirical approaches governing PHE dynamics from multiple disciplinary perspectives, including those from geography, public health / epidemiology, demography, and economic.
This course examines the causes and consequences of poverty and inequality in the United States, and reviews the major social policies used to combat poverty's ill effects. The course will begin by acquainting students with the definition and extent of poverty in the United States, situating the discussion in the larger context of American inequality.
At least as much as any other institution, families can distribute resources among their members across time and space, spread risk, and foster cooperation. In this seminar, we will examine some of the ways that extended families function as economic institutions, and how the institution of the family interacts with other more formal institutions to affect policy outcomes.
This course covers the life table and stationary population models, method of estimation of life tables, multiple-decrement and increment-decrement life tables, the stable population model, model age schedules for mortality, nuptiality, fertility, and migration, survival analysis and hazard regression models, the random walk life table model and its extensions, and applications of computer packages for demographic analysis.
This course reviews the basic statistical methods of inferring the causal impact of public policy initiatives on social outcomes. Topics include randomized controlled trials, instrumental variable analysis, regression discontinuity designs, difference-in-difference “natural experiments,” and propensity score/nearest neighbor matching methods.
Survey methods and practice draw on statistics, psychology, sociology, computer science, and economics. This course introduces the student to principles of survey design and to practical issues in execution across different types of population.
This is an introductory course to the techniques used to investigate a number of important population processes which have major implications for global health and health inequalities, and public policy: population change (growth and decline), fertility change and patterns, population health and disease patterns, mortality and causes of death, population movements.