Throughout the year, CSDE reviews applications from demographers working at other universities, as well as those working in the private and public sectors. These affiliates are keen to engage with CSDE’s scholarly community. As external affiliates they are able to access our computing resources (including data and software) and online seminars or workshops, consults with our scientific staff, and collaborate easily with CSDE’s UW faculty on research projects. Non-UW demographers interested in affiliating with CSDE can click here to apply. We are excited to welcome four new external affiliates:

• Angela Bruns — Assistant Professor of Sociology & Criminology, Gonzaga University. Dr. Bruns’ research focuses on how families’ interactions with two social institutions—mass incarceration and the low-wage labor market—impact their health and economic well-being. She teaches courses on gender, family, mass incarceration, and social statistics.
• Taylor Danielson — Research Manager, Dept of Social and Health Services Research & Data Analysis Division, Washington State Department of Social and Health Services.
• Ryan Gabriel — Assistant Professor of Sociology, Brigham Young University. Dr. Gabriel earned his PhD in Sociology at the University of Washington in 2016. His research interests include: urban sociology, residential segregation, residential mobility and neighborhood attainment, and legacies of racial violence.
• Michelle Lee — Assistant Professor of Strategy and Organizations, Smith School of Business, Queens University. Dr. Lee’s research involves studying top executives and CEOs of public companies and involves large panel datasets including data from the Census Bureau. Her dissertation research studies how the social class background of executives affects their promotion likelihood and career outcomes.

UW Today recently highlighted CSDE Affiliate Jon Wakefield‘s contribution to the World Health Organization’s collaborative work estimating excess deaths attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic. Also covered in the New York Times, the country-level estimates have had a massive media response for discrepancies with nationally-reported estimates in some countries. Despite this response, Wakefield emphasizes in his interview with UW his experience in the field and the team’s ongoing mission to improve model estimates. In tandem to the media response, academics and statisticians around the world have provided feedback and constructive criticism that Wakefield and the WHO team are taking into account as they seek to continually improve their model and the integrity of its estimates.

CSDE Affiliate and Development Core Director Steven Goodreau, CSDE Senior Research Scientist Deven Hamilton, and CSDE trainee alum Emily Pollock have just published research examining the direct causes behind the large declines in pregnancies among adolescent females in the US over the decade 2007-2017.  Published in The Journal of Adolescent and Pediatric Gynecology, the study estimates that delays in age at first sex over this time period played by far the largest role in reducing pregnancies, followed by subsequent reductions in partner numbers, and adoption of more effective forms of contraception like IUDs and implants.  These three behavioral changes combined averted an estimated 615,400 pregnancies among US adolescents over this period, with associated medical and societal costs saved of over $12 billion. The work highlights just how much more successfully recent cohorts of young Americans have managed to delay pregnancies than prior generations, and where areas for improvement remain.