Population Studies and Training Center

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The Washington Post

We Need More Research on Guns

Some researchers have created databases to describe mass shooters. But this is descriptive data, not a predictive model. What is it about a school kid, a lonely elderly man, or a young adult that makes them shoot themselves or someone else? Are there environmental signals that we can act on? Are they long term, or in the moment? How do we identify these signs, whether in social media or personal interactions, without violating privacy rights and without bias?
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News headlines often give the impression of teacher shortages as national and state level crises, but if policymakers want to ensure classrooms are adequately staffed, they need to examine and address labor market conditions more locally, all the way down to the school level.
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Professor Linford Fisher’s team of research assistants has been hunting through letters, diaries, court papers, newspapers, and other records, searching for references to Indigenous people who were enslaved or forced into other positions of servitude.
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Racism operates at the interpersonal, cultural, and structural levels, marginalizing or excluding minoritized racial and ethnic groups from the social, economic, and political resources and opportunities that represent important social determinants of health—and exposing these groups to higher levels of social, economic, environmental, and psychosocial harms throughout the life course.
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The Critic

The pontiff who looked the other way

The job of a pope is, compared to that of secular leaders, enviably straightforward. He is absolute ruler of a tiny sovereign state with a vast spiritual diaspora. Where the job starts to get more complicated is in times of global crisis, when popes are expected to provide moral leadership, not just to fellow Catholics but to the whole world.
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Knowable Magazine

America is failing women’s health

The state of women’s health in the US is shocking — even to us, medical sociologists and demographers with a history of studying gender and health.
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The Times

13 best philosophy and ideas books of 2022

Oded Galor's book, "The Journey of Humanity: The Origins of Wealth and Inequality," has been included on The Times' list of Best Philosophy and Ideas Books of 2022.
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This October, Professor of Population Studies Mike White and PSTC Postdoctoral Research Associate Chantel Pfeiffer gathered with fellow researchers from the Migrant Health Follow Up Study (MHFUS) for a mini-conference at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) School of Public Health in Johannesburg, South Africa.
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Despite an increase in wildfire risk spurred by climate change, Americans are moving to wildfire-prone areas and prioritizing lower housing costs and amenities such as temperate weather and recreational opportunities over risk of natural disasters.
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The Atlantic

Let's Declare a Pandemic Amnesty

PSTC Economist Emily Oster advocates for shifting our energies toward solving problems the pandemic revealed or created and away from arguing over choices made during the uncertainty of a novel public health crisis.
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As part of his ongoing work with the Land Degradation Neutrality Project (Tools4LDN), Interim Director of Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences (S4) and Assistant Professor of Population Studies Kevin Mwenda and his colleagues hosted a series of virtual pilot workshops with collaborators in Colombia to assess how current datasets can be better used to monitor the impacts of global land degradation.
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Today’s climate emergency is reminiscent of the past population growth crisis: Both represent existential challenges requiring sustained global efforts. Our success on the population issue holds key lessons for addressing the climate crisis as well.
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