PSC News

Emmanuel Francis Souza has been awarded a Judith Rodin Fellowship for the 2018-19 year. This award is to support the work of distinguished Ph.D. students in the social sciences. Congratulations!

"Killing The Black Body" by PSC Associate, Dorothy Roberts was listed on The Chronicle of Higher Education's list of influential books for the past 20 years.

GGD student, Akudo Ejelonu, won first prize in the Student Environmental Health poster competition of the American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting in San Diego. Congratulations Akudo!

According to analysis from John M. More »

Daniel Aldana Cohen wrote an article in The Nation the media's poor coverage of the recently published UN climate report

GGD student, Akudo Ejelonu, was awarded the Outstanding Continuing Student Award by University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA).

New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Kulkarni, Veena, Vani Kulkarni, and Raghav Gaiha. 2018. "Aging, Disability and Disease in India." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2018-21.

Just in case you missed the PSC's first 2018 Colloquium presentation by David Bravo (PSC & PARC Affiliiate) you can watch the PSC/PARC Spanish Colloquium where he discusses "The Quality of Life of Older Adults in Chile" ("Calidad de Vida de los Adultos Mayores en Chile"). Down More »

New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Yadav, Pratima, Vani Kulkarni, and Raghav Gaiha. 2018. "Growing Burden of Non-Communicable Diseases in India." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2018-20.

Hyunjoon Park has been elected as Secretary/Treasurer of Research Committee 28 (RC28) on Social Stratification and Mobility of the International Sociological Association. RC28 is the international community of scholars who study stratification and inequality. Hyunjoon Park will serve for the next four years (2018-22).

Jordan Weiss co-authored a 2018 Curt Richter Award titled "Aerobic exercise lengthens telomeres and reduces stress in family caregivers: A randomized controlled trial".

Megan N. Reed has spent the past month in Delhi reaching out to local people for her research on marriage decisions. The project hopes to build on findings from a previous Center for the Advanced Study of India (CASI) survey, which used electoral rolls to randomly select a sample group. Read more here.

New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Furstenberg, Frank 2018. "American Kinship Reconsidered." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2018-19.

New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Pandey, Manoj, Vani Kulkarni, and Raghav Gaiha. 2018. "Aging, Depression, Non-Communicable Diseases and Disabilities in South Africa." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC), 2018-18.

John MacDonald, Emilio Parrado, Chenoa Flippen, and Kristen Harknett are among several researchers featured in a new Penn Today article about the city of Philadelphia as a lab, classroom, and collaborator

PSC researcher, Linda H. Aiken, was interviewed by the Patient Safety Network (PSNET) about nursing outcomes and investing in nursing.

Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde discusses the potential—and pitfalls—of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin in an Omnia article and a Penn Wharton Public Policy Initiative Issue Brief. 

Luca Maria Pesando recently published an article in Education Economics on the financial literacy of high school students.

Caroline Hartnett, GGD alumna and Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of South Carolina, recently penned an article in The Conversation about fertility in the US and it's current and past significance.

PSC Researcher Kevin Volpp is mention in a Philadelphia Inquirer article on the cost of health care and the decisions made by patients.

Congratulations to PSC Researcher Kevin Volpp on his appointment as Penn's inaugural Founders President's Distinguished Professor!

Kevin Volpp and co-author have published an article in The New England Journal of Medicine about preventive interventions in the treatment of diabetes.

Congratulations to Monica King on winning the IPUMS Research Award for her paper Under The Hood: Revealing Patterns Of Motor Vehicle Fatalities In The United States!.

Hans-Peter Kohler of the School of Arts and Sciences is interviewed on PBS Newshour on the downward trend in the birthrate despite improved economic conditions. More »

Mark Pauly of the Wharton School argued in a Philly Inquirer article for compromise over Medicaid redesign. Although work requirements are controversial, according to Pauly their implementation may persuade lawmakers to expand health coverage to the bulk of non-disabled poor working adults. 

Politics and Demography Francesco Billari, Professor of Demography at Bocconi University and PSC Research Affiliate, examines the changing demography of Turkey under the Ergodan administration. Read the article here.

New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Ashraf, Nava; Natalie Bau; Corinne Low; and Kathleen McGinn (2018). “Negotiating a Better Future: How Interpersonal Skills Facilitate Inter-generational Investment.” University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC) WP2018-17.

Jordan Weiss was awarded an internship with the National Institute on Aging's Laboratory of Epidemiology & Population Science as part of the Summer Trainee in Aging Research Program. Jordan will expand on his current work in biodemography and epidemiology, and focus on concepts related to frailty and life course determinants of cognitive aging. Jordan was also recently awarded the President Gutmann Leadership Award.

Kevin Volpp and co-authors have published a new article on health care expenditure and life expectancy in the United States in Jama Cardiology. Read more here.

Daniel Cohen was mentioned in a Zilient article about greening urban spaces. Read more here.

Courtney Boen received a pilot award from Penn Institute on Aging for her project on Psychosocial Stress Exposure, Biological Functioning, and Cognitive Change across the Life Course. Check out the list of awardees here.

Onoso Imoagene has published new research on "Stepping up Your Game: Workplace Experiences of Second-Generation Nigerians in the USA" in the Journal of International Migration and Integration.

New working paper by PSC/PARC Research Assoiate Olivia S. Mitchell titled " Older Women's Labor Market Attachment, Retirement Planning. and Household Debt" was cited in a recent Population Reference Bureau article. 

Mark Pauly and fellow Penn professors have published a book titled "Managing Discovery in the Life Sciences: Harnessing Creativity to Drive Biomedical Innovation,” which explores importing both scientific knowledge and business acumen for launching scientific discovery into a billion dollar market. More »

Joseph Kable and his co-authors' research on risk tolerance linked to amygdala and prefrontal cortex brain regions has just been published in Neuron, Forbes and More »

New Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC): Pesando, Luca Maria and Alejandra Abufhele (2018). "Household Determinants of Teen Marriage and Childbearing: Sister Effects Across Four Low- and Middle-Income Countries." University of Pennsylvania Population Center Working Paper (PSC/PARC) WP2018-16.

Jason Karlawish is mentioned in a Washington Post article about informing alzheimer patients of their mental state due to the disease. He says, "the default is the truth and that the mere fact that the truth may be painful isn’t sufficient to avoid it".

A Next City article mentions study by John MacDonald of the School of Arts and Sciences and others pointing to the value of reviving vacant and abandoned city lots. More »

Researchers Mark V. Pauly and Kevin G. Volpp have publish an article in MarketWatch about the effects of proposed government budget cuts to Medicare on healthcare.

A study by Samuel Preston and Irma Elo uses nationally representative data to estimate the mortality hazards associated with diabetes, combining those hazards with the prevalence of diabetes to estimate the fraction of deaths attributable to diabetes and its effect on life expectancy. Evaluating the impact of diabetes on age-specific mortality may be salient in identifying the effect of rising obesity levels on US mortality and its contribution to racial/ethnic mortality disparities. More »

LDI Senior Fellows Douglas Wiebe and Mitesh Patel of the Perelman School of Medicine and Hans-Peter Kohler of the School of Arts and Sciences are using pilot grants to test concepts ranging from the support of Philadelphia's effort to launch the first safe injection site to the effect of survival perceptions on HIV patients and the change of physician behavior. More »

Mark Pauly is mentioned in a Knowledge@Wharton article discussing the Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase health care alliance.

The Knowledge@Wharton show on SiriusXM channel 111 recently invited Janice Bellace, Wharton professor of legal studies and business ethics; Janice Madden, professor of regional science and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and a real estate professor at Wharton; and Thorgerdur Einarsdottir, professor of gend More »

Global Family Change: Persistent Diversity with Development, authored by Luca Maria Pesando, Andrés Castro, Hans-Peter Kohler, Frank Furstenberg and other international collaborators, was posted today in the PSC Working Paper Series. Read the abstract and paper here.

Many scholars, like many moms, believe that baby fat exists to keep infants warm. More »

Last week Penn's Institute on Aging and the Population Aging Research Center co-hosted Dr. Anne Newman as a part of the Visiting Scholars Series. The talk, titled What does it take to live a long and healthy life, covered several variables that impact the stages of aging and living healthy later in life. Irma T. Elo also participated in discussion about U.S. More »

During the past 20 years, Hans-Peter Kohler of the School of Arts and Sciences has investigated how social, epidemiological and demographic factors affect people in Malawi. His is a rare example of a longitudinal study focused on a population in a low-income nation that has had to confront stressors like famine and AIDS. More »

Onoso Imoagene of the School of Arts and Sciences is quoted in a New York Times article on the expectation of success for the children of African migrants. Read article here.

Research led by professor Samuel Preston and Penn alum Andrew Stokes of the School of Arts and Sciences measured the impact of rising obesity on mortality rates in the United States, based on the maximum body mass index of individuals between 1988 and 2011. They found that the obesity epidemic is to blame for preventing the U.S. More »

The end of the individual mandate requiring Americans to purchase insurance looms large, but it’s not the only administrative change that the health care sector will see in the coming year, according to Mark Pauly. He and Robert Field looked at the future of Medicare, drug prices and health care job prospects on Knowledge@Wharton. More »

Richard Berk of the School of Arts and Sciences is cited for developing a probation and parole risk-assessment tool for Philadelphia. Read article here.

Daniel Aldana Cohen published a paper, "Climate Justice and the Right to the City" with the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy, Penn Institute for Urban Research, and Perry World House. In his article, Cohen discusses the overlap between climate justice and the "right to the city" agenda.

Patient satisfaction is closely linked to the number of nurses on wards, according to a study led by Linda Aiken of the School of Nursing, published in the journal BMJ Open. More »

Pictured above from left to right: Jeffrey Lin, Iourii Manovskii, Mallick Hossain, and Keith Sill. More »

Americans are more likely than ever before to enter retirement carrying debt, which leaves them vulnerable to rising interest rates. Olivia Mitchell emphasizes the importance of the housing market and easier mortgage products as factors in driving this debt increase in older households. Read the column and her study here. 

Before winter break Michel Guillot assembled a team of experts to meet about the newly funded NICHD research project Global Age Patterns of Under 5 Mortality. More »