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 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.
This seminar will survey the research literature in three areas of the demography of aging: (1) biodemography, (2) medical demography, and (3) social demography. In each area, the objectives are for students to obtain an understanding of key concepts, theories, methods, and research findings so that they can read, understand, and begin contributing to current research in the area.
This graduate-level course explores the theory and the method of ethnography through critiques and class discussions of exemplar ethnographies. The heart of the course is practice in learning how to do field work, write good field notes, and analyze data.
This seminar examines the impact of poverty and socioeconomic inequality, more generally, on the health of individuals and populations. Attention is given to both US and non-US populations. Topics covered include the conceptualization and measurement of poverty and socioeconomic inequality at the individual and population level; socioeconomic gradients in health; and the adequacy of public policy responses in the US and elsewhere to health inequity challenges in the age of globalization.
This seminar will cover selected topics in medical sociology such as social structure and health; social behavior and health; organization and financing of health care; and medical sociology (for example, social epidemiology, stress and coping, health and aging).
This course covers the substantive findings and policies/policy debates around key selected topics in population and health today in industrialized and developing societies. Demographic models are used to understand, frame, define and evaluate these topics.