Research Themes - Overview
One challenge that directly confronts population research infrastructure programs is the wide-ranging expertise needed to address important issues in the health and wellbeing of human populations. A related challenge is to bridge the gap between micro-analysis of individuals and households that takes the biological, social, and environmental context of behavior as given, and macro-level analysis of population outcomes that incorporates the interdependencies between individual actors and their environment. CSDE researchers are uniquely well-positioned to meet this research challenge and to contribute to global efforts to solve complex problems, having made considerable progress in two areas: extending research collaborations outside the social sciences, and developing linkages between micro and macro-level analyses of demographic outcomes. Our five signature research themes have a number of cross-cutting features that are characteristic of our research program. All are multidisciplinary and include affiliates from several different fields. All of the substantive themes are also international in scope and include research that is basic, applied, and policy-oriented. |
The core of CSDE consists of a large group of productive population scholars, most with disciplinary homes in sociology, anthropology, economics, geography, and psychology, who are highly visible members of the population research community. What distinguishes CSDE as a center at the leading edge of population studies has been a willingness to transcend disciplinary boundaries and surmount technical and methodological limitations in designing new research programs. As demographic research has expanded beyond the traditional study of fertility, mortality and migration to incorporate family interaction, human development, and social disparities, many new conceptual and methodological challenges have arisen.
