Skip to content
Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

Raftery Provides Empirical Perspectives on US’ Declining Birthrates

In a recent essay in The Conversation, CSDE Affiliate Adrian Raftery offers nuanced and comparative insights on the CDC’s May 2021 report about a decline in U.S. birth rates. In the essay, Raftery cautions against a panicked reaction, noting that falling birth rates have been true in the U.S. for forty years, such trends are similar to other similarly-situated nations, and that the very recent and dramatic decline in immigration to the U.S. contributed to the seemingly startling decline in birthrates.

Igra and Kenworthy’s Study on Crowdfunding and COVID-19 Makes News!

CSDE Affiliate Nora Kenworthy, along with  UW Sociology PhD Student Mark Igra and other co-authors, recently published an article in  Social Science & Medicine examining the scope and impacts of COVID-19 related crowdfunding in the early months of the pandemic and assessing how existing social and health inequities shaped crowdfunding use and outcomes. The article received significant attention in the media and a special press release from the UW. Using data collected from all US-based GoFundMe campaigns mentioning COVID or coronavirus, the authors use a descriptive analysis and a series of negative binomial and linear models to assess the contributions of demographic factors and COVID-19 impacts to campaign creation and outcome. They find that Crowdfunding provides substantially higher benefits in wealthier counties with higher levels of education, and differential outcomes based on the racial and ethnic composition of county population. Taken together, the findings demonstrate how a market-oriented digital technology used to respond to large-scale crisis can exacerbate inequalities and further benefit already privileged groups. CSDE Research Scientist Christine Leibbrand provided statistical consulting for the study.

Bleil Receives R01 Grant from NIH!

Congratulations to CSDE Affiliate Dr. Maria Bleil, Research Assistant Professor in Nursing, who recently received a NIH/NHLBI R01 Grant to study the effect of postnatal parenting support in primary care on cardiometabolic health in early childhood among at-risk families. The study aims to determine whether benefits of a Promoting First Relationships (PFR intervention), originally designed to impact parent-child behavioral and relationship outcomes in infancy extend to the child’s cardiometabolic health in early childhood. NIH funding will support the return of 214 mother-child dyads (85% of 252 total families) who participated in the original RCT. CSDE will provide support for the biomarker data collection, including assistance in developing protocols and training the study staff to conduct on-site point-of-care blood testing, and to collect biospecimens. CSDE’s Biodemography Lab will assay the resulting specimens for biomarkers that may be related to cardiometabolic health. Once the data are collected, CSDE will be supporting Bleil’s statistical analyses.