Workshops in Formal Demography

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PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Following on a very successful launch of this training program at the University of California Berkeley, the purpose of this renewal project is to continue providing high level training workshops for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and early career faculty interested in acquiring formal demography skills. Formal demography consists of a set of analytic tools that allow for a kind of analysis not possible with standard statistical models and are therefore critical in addressing the kinds of complex population processes occurring in the 21st century. We build on the success of the first 5-year cycle, and introduce new workshop content by having a yearly special emphasis topic chosen to connect formal demography to important and newly emerging areas of demographic research. Pedagogically, we will modernize the workshop format by adding pre-workshop remote learning, on-site team projects, and a new generation of instructors. The proposed program consists of three weeks of guided independent study prior to the workshop, a weeklong workshop in Berkeley – three days of training followed by a two-day research conference; and an annual networking event at Population Association of America meetings. The three days of core training will include instruction on population dynamics and hands-on training in modern demographic computing (in the R statistical modeling language). A third day will include training and methods specific to that year's special emphasis topic. These workshops not only serve as training grounds, but also provide ample opportunities for networking and building relationships and community. During the week, trainees will also work on group projects to give them ample hands-on experience with the data and methodology, and results of these projects are presented on the final day of the workshop. The topics covered in the workshops include the continuation of core topics in the mathematical modeling of fertility and mortality, with the addition of new themes in population models of contagious diseases, impact of climate change on demography, and digital demography. These elements – training, research presentations, group projects, networking – work to create a long-lasting community of scholars that can engage in interdisciplinary research for years to come. In this way we expect that the topics of these studies will serve to inform demographic and social science research and have positive impacts in particular on population health policies.