*New* SocSEM: Jack Goldstone on How Population Will Change the World in the 21st Century (02/12/26)
The University of Washington Department of Sociology is pleased to host Jack Goldstone, the Virginia E and John T. Hazel Jr. Professor of Public Policy at George Mason University and a Senior Fellow of the Mercatus Center, to join us for a SocSEM event on Thursday, February 12, 2026 at 12:30 pm, in Savery Hall room 409.
Goldstone will focus on the seriousness of an aging population. Europe, the Americas and Asia will soon have the oldest populations known to humanity. Can we cope? He will lead a discussion on the changes that will be needed in the future to avoid disaster, including ways we thing about youth, women, immigration, and globalization.
He will also discuss his new book 10 Billion: How Aging, Immigration, Women and Youth will Change the World in the 21st Century which will be published by Oxford University Press.
Jack A. Goldstone (PhD Harvard) has received the Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award from the American Sociological Association, the Arnoldo Momigliano Prize, the Barrington Moore Jr. Award, the Myron Weiner Award, the Ibn Khaldun Award, and fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, the JS Guggenheim Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Mellow Foundation, and the U.S. Institute of Peace.
SocSEM events are sponsored by the Earl & Edna Stice Memorial Lecture and Book Series in Social Science.
*New* The New Wave of SRH Indicators: Where Do Fertility Goals Fit In? (02/12/26)
Join the Ohio Population Consortium on February 12 at 12 pm EST for the second of three webinars in a series on “Fertility Goals: Conceptualization, Measurement, and Implications for Science and Policy“. CSDE External Affiliate Jamaica Corker (BMGF) is one of four panelist speaking on new indicators of sexual and reproductive health. Register for Zoom link.
There has been a recent surge of efforts to develop new indicators of sexual and reproductive health, indicators intended to supplant the constructs “unmet need for contraception” and “demand satisfied” that have served as featured indicators during the past two decades. The proposed indicators reflect an effort to achieve a more woman-centered approach to both SRH science and policy. Fertility goals were essential ingredients of the past indicators. Where do they fit in now? Have they been sidelined (deliberately or unintentionally)? If so, is this defensible and desirable, from both a scientific and policy perspective? The aim of this webinar is to have an energetic exchange about these (and related) questions.
Presenters
- John Casterline, Institute for Population Research, The Ohio State University
- Nurudeen Alhassan, AFIDEP, Lilongwe, Malawi
- Jamaica Corker, External Research Affiliate, Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology, University of Washington
- Leigh Senderowicz, Department of Gender & Women’s Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison
*New* CAPS Webinar: Moderated Discussion on Social Science Funding within NIH (02/13/26)
Syracuse University is sponsoring a webinar on the funding landscape at NIH for aging and population health research. Since CSDE is part of the Association of Population Centers, along with Syracuse, UW affiliates are welcome to join. Two sociologists will be offering their insights on their understanding of the current landscape, given their experiences and current roles. Both are highly productive social scientists with longstanding, successfully funded research programs from NICHD, NIA, NIMH, NIAID, NCI, etc. Sarah Burgard is the University of Michigan’s population center director and Tara McKay is the co-founder of the LGBTQ+ Policy Lab at Vanderbilt University. The conversation and insights should be illuminating. Sarah Burgard is also President of the Association of Population Centers and actively engaged in interacting with NIH programs, other federal agencies, and with US Congress on health funding for population research.
Please add this to your calendar and feel free to join Syracuse University’s Center for Aging and Population Studies for a moderated discussion on funding research in population health and aging. The speakers, Sarah Burgard and Tara McKay, will address the current funding landscape and prospects for the future.
Applications Open for NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Early Career Workshop (02/13/26)
We are now accepting applications for the NIH Behavioral and Social Sciences Early Career Workshop. This opportunity provides early stage investigators with training on how to transform their research ideas into competitive NIH grant applications. The workshop includes strategies for developing strong NIH proposals, navigating the peer review process, and building a professional network to support a successful research career. The application submission deadline is February 13, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. ET.
This workshop provides opportunities to gain insights from NIH program officers and scientific review officers on writing strong National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant proposals and navigating the peer review process. It also facilitates networking with NIH program staff and fellow early career researchers, exchange ideas, and connect with potential collaborators
Program Details
OBSSR will select up to 15 early stage investigators to present their research findings and participate in this one-day, in-person workshop. Selection will be based on an applicant’s first-authored research paper.
Key Dates
- Application Submission Deadline: February 13, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. ET
- Awardee Notification: May 1, 2026
- Workshop Date (in-person): June 3, 2026
Eligibility Requirements
To qualify, applicants must submit one eligible article focused on the study of behavioral and social phenomena relevant to health. They also must—
- Meet the National Institutes of Health’s definition of an early stage investigator.
- Be the sole or primary author of a peer-reviewed, original research article, published or accepted between January 1 to December 31, 2025.
The Hidden Private Safety Net: Shared Households and Older Adults’ Housing Costs – Kristin Perkins
Follow this link to sign up for a 1:1 meeting with Dr. Perkins during her visit on February 13th.
We are looking forward to hosting Kristin Perkins from Georgetown University on Friday, February 13 in Parrington Hall 360 and on Zoom. This seminar is co-sponsored by the Population Health Initiative and the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance.
Where U.S. public supports fall short of need, individuals often turn to the private safety net – instrumental support from family and friends. Although impacts of the public safety net are well-documented, less research considers how the private safety net shapes patterns of hardship. Focusing on the case of older adults’ shared households, this study demonstrates how the provision and receipt of private safety net support shapes housing costs and, ultimately, our understanding of the contours of the housing affordability crisis. Using Survey of Income and Program Participation data, we find that 15% of older adults are hosts, who share their home with others, and 6% are guests, who live in someone else’s home. Counterfactual estimates reveal that guests pay $713 less a month on housing than they would in nonshared housing, and hosts pay $53 more. Without shared households, an additional 5% of older adults would experience cost burdens, and racial disparities would be up to 400% larger. Our findings illustrate that private safety net support is an important component of the U.S. social safety net: taking this support for granted risks obscuring the level of need – and disparities in needs – that are left by the private market.
Kristin L. Perkins is an assistant professor of sociology at Georgetown University. She studies inequality and social stratification focusing on children, families, households, and neighborhoods. Her current work on neighborhood inequality and household composition is united by its common focus on where, and with whom, people live, and she contributes to scholarship in two primary subfields: urban sociology and family demography. Her research has been published in journals including Demography, Social Forces, Sociological Science, Social Science Research, and Urban Affairs Review. She received her PhD in Sociology & Social Policy from Harvard University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.
Chen Finds that Leveraging Residents as Sharing Captains in a Decentralized Scheme Significantly Enhances Community Resilience and Outperforms Status Quo Fixed-Point Distribution
CSDE Affiliate Cynthia Chen (Civil & Environmental Engineering) published two studies that show untapped capacity for community resilience through place-based peer-to-peer (P2P) resource sharing. Both studies use data from two socioeconomically different communities in Seattle. First, in an article in Nature Cities, Chen demonstrated that under a 5-day isolation scenario, place-based P2P sharing can reduce a community’s resilience loss by 13.4–100%; on average, 22–44 social ties per household support an 80% sharing rate of surplus resources. In a related paper in Transportation Research, Chen simulated and compared the efficacy of a P2P decentralized scheme involving sharing captains (residents that take on the role of distributing resources among neighbors) against the status quo fixed-point distribution method that relies on residents to come and get resources. The decentralized P2P strategy reached 100% resource coverage faster. Moreover, while the success of P2P strategy lies fundamentally on residents’ willingness to share, a satisfactory outcome can be reached even when a substantial share of residents (40%) is unwilling to share with anybody.
Peckham Explores How Transitions Between Types of Employment Quality Impact Health
CSDE Affiliate Trevor Peckham (DEOHS/King County) recently published an article in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine that explored how transitions between types of employment quality impact health in the United States. Peckham and co-authors Vanessa Oddo and Eric W. Lundstrom used the U.S. Medical Expenditure Panel Survey data from 2008 to 2022 to identify unique employment quality types for men and women. Respondents transitioning to or from precarious employment or unemployment reported poor/fair self-rated health (SRH) and self-rated mental health (SRMH) more frequently relative to those with Standard Employment Relationships. Some respondents cycled between precarious employment and unemployment, potentially compounding the effects of employment instability on health.
Russell Sage Foundation – Social, Political and Economic Inequality Research Grants (03/11/26)
Award amount: $200,000
Sponsor deadline: 03/11/2026
Program description:
The Russell Sage Foundation’s (RSF) program on Social, Political, and Economic Inequality supports innovative research on the factors that contribute to social, political, and economic inequalities in the U.S., and the extent to which those inequalities affect social, political, psychological, and economic outcomes such as educational and labor market access and opportunities, social and economic mobility within and across generations, and civic participation and representation.
We seek innovative investigator-initiated research that will expand our understanding of social, political, and economic inequalities and the mechanisms by which they influence the lives of individuals, families, and communities. We welcome projects that explore the relevance of economic, racial, ethnic, age, gender, immigration, residence, or other statuses for the distribution of social, political, and economic outcomes within and across different status groups.
RSF prioritizes analyses that make use of newly available data or demonstrate novel uses of existing data. We support original data collection when a project is focused on important program priorities, projects that conduct survey or field experiments and qualitative studies. RSF encourages methodological variety and inter-disciplinary collaboration. Proposed projects must have well-developed conceptual frameworks and rigorous research designs. Analytical models must be well-specified and research methods must be appropriate.
A brief letter of inquiry (4 pages max. excluding references) must precede a full proposal to determine whether the proposed project is in line with the Foundation’s program priorities and available funds.
Eligibility:
Faculty & PIs
Russell Sage Foundation – Causal Research on the Criminal Justice System for Early-Career Scholars (04/01/26)
Award amount: $100,000
Sponsor deadline: 04/01/2026
Program description:
The Russell Sage Foundation (RSF), in collaboration with the Criminal Justice program at Arnold Ventures (AV) is pleased to announce its first annual grants competition for early-career scholars. Our goal is to cultivate a pipeline of researchers conducting causal research on the criminal justice system. Criminal justice policies and practices include the work of police, courts, jails, prisons, probation and parole, and immigration detention.
Proposals must include causal research designs that can reliably isolate the treatment effects of a policy, practice, or intervention. Examples include difference-in-differences, regression discontinuity, instrumental variables, and randomized controlled trials. Mixed methods projects will be considered if a causal research design is central to the proposal.
Eligibility:
Faculty & PIs, Early-career