Spring 2013

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.

Note: Seminar will be in Soc / Psych 329 at 1:00pm on Friday.

ABSTRACT: We carry out an analysis of societal variations in the process of educational attainment using a multilevel modeling strategy to assess how societal modernization, educational expansion, social inequality, a world-wide secular trend toward greater equality of opportunity, and communist educational policies affect the dependence of educational attainment on parental status and the gender gap in educational attainment. Using data from 541 sample surveys conducted in 54 countries, we define five-year birth cohorts ranging from the late 19th century through the late 20th century.

ABSTRACT: In analysis of longitudinal data about migration behavior in rural northeastern Thailand, we examine the association of migration behavior with patterns of NDVI signals to estimate exposure to non-modal clusters over varying periods of retrospective time. Our hazard model approach indicates significantly different associations between rural out migration and return migration depending on the length of the temporal lens.

ABSTRACT: For all climatic regions, mortality due to cold exceeds mortality due to heat. A separate line of research indicates that lifespan after age 50 depends on month of birth. This research as well as literature documenting developmental plasticity and culling in utero implies the hypothesis that ambient temperature during gestation may influence cold-related adult mortality. We use data on over 13,500 Swedes to test whether subjects whose mothers experienced unusually benign ambient temperatures during their gestation exhibit an elevated risk of cold-related mortality in adulthood.

This is a jointly sponsored event with the Carolina Population Center. The seminar will be held at the University of North Carolina. It will be held at the Pleasants Family Assembly Room at Wilson Library, UNC-Chapel Hill campus.

ABSTRACT: Despite widespread success in using Twitter data to explain what people are doing or talking about, little attention has been paid to developing systematic ways of gathering demographic information from this data source. This paper develops a scalable, sustainable toolkit for social science researchers interested in using Twitter data to examine behaviors and attitudes, as well as understand the populations expressing them. We begin by describing how to collect Twitter data on a particular population ¿ in this case, individuals who did not plan to vote in the 2012 U.S.

ABSTRACT: Low income has long been associated with worse child and adult health for certain outcomes, but the extent and direction of causal association has been controversial, with many thorough analyses and reviews suggesting little to no true causal association. While progress on this topic has been made using some quasi-experimental studies and instrumental variables to estimate effects, many approaches have been limited in their generalizability to policy.

ABSTRACT: Poverty and altered planning horizons brought on by the HIV/AIDS epidemic can change individual discount rates, altering incentives to conserve natural resources. Using longitudinal data from household surveys in western Kenya, this paper estimate impacts of health status on labor productivity and discount rates. The findings indicate that household size and composition are predictors of whether the effect on productivity dominates the discount rate effect, or vice-versa.