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Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology

Jennifer Romich and Mark Long Reflect on Lessons from Seattle’s $15 Minimum Wage

A recent Vox story on what Seattle has learned from having the highest minimum wage in the nation quoted CSDE Affiliates Jennifer Romich, Associate Professor at the School of Social Work, and Mark Long, Professor at the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance. The researchers explained findings from UW’s collaborative minimum wage studies regarding workers’ hours, take-home pay, business closures, and price of goods.

“The restaurant industry moans and groans about minimum wage increase, but the Seattle newspaper every month has a story about 40 new restaurants opening,” said Romich, remarking on business owners who threatened to leave Seattle but haven’t followed through. Romich and collaborators, many of whom are CSDE Affiliates, found the most common response to the wage increase was to raise prices or fiddle with workers’ hours.

Long explained that the initial data suggested a “tipping point” between $11 and $13 “when it becomes less tenable to keep work in the city.” A later paper broke down the actual take-home pay of workers and found that those who were already employed at the low end of the wage scale in Seattle “enjoyed significantly more rapid hourly wage growth.”

Students: Apply to be a Volunteer at the 2019 IAPHS “Local, National, Global Impacts on Population Health” Conference

The Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Sciences (IAPHS) is accepting applications from students to serve as Meeting Volunteers, and get both a registration waiver and chance to meet and connect with other population health scientists!

CSDE is co-sponsoring the conference, which will take place in Seattle on 10/1-10/4/2019. If you are a CSDE Trainee, Fellow, or Affiliate, you can receive 20% off your membership. Check out the program details and registration information and contact Scott Kelly for membership and registration discount code.

Each accepted volunteer will be required to work 11-13 hours during the course of the meeting. Applicants must be current 2019 Student members of IAPHS and will be required to indicate their top 12 time preferences for volunteering. Positions are limited and fill quickly. For additional information, including a full volunteer schedule, click here.

Senior Research Program Coordinator, USAID STAR Program

We are seeking a dynamic, motivated individual to oversee the administrative and scientific implementation of the USAID STAR program. The Senior Research Program Coordinator II will support overall project coordination. In particular, they will support the development and implementation of a set of tailored learning activities for 150+ global health fellows, specifically development of operation manuals, the implementation of a participant management system, and navigation of JHU learning resources. Specific tasks will include developing a database of learning activities, supporting the development of workshops, monitoring and evaluation activities, coordinate the writing of research publications and written reports of the Learning program within STAR. The ideal candidate will have experience working in technical support roles in learning organizations and multi-organizational partnerships and demonstrates cross-cultural competence and sensitivity.

Assistant Professor, Sociology (Criminology, Corrections, Punishment, and/or Crime)

Tenure-track position in Sociology, at the rank of assistant professor, with expertise in criminology, corrections, punishment, and/or crime. These topics may be stand-alone areas of inquiry, or they may be highlighted substantially in conversation with other areas of inquiry such as public health, demography, race and social inequalities. Qualified applicants will also have expertise in quantitative methods. Desirable candidates will also have a demonstrated desire to connect with local organizations for community-based research and/or teaching. Effective August 2020. Ph.D. required.

Call for Papers and Posters: Linking Policies and People: New Insights on Migration and Development (Bonn, Germany, 10/30-10/31/2019)

Numbers of international migrants are at a historic high. While people have always been on the move and the benefits of migration are internationally acknowledged, reaping these benefits through “safe, orderly and regular migration” (SDG 10.7) continues to be a challenge at international, national and local levels. Moreover, the numbers of forcibly displaced people have continued to climb since reporting started. Neighbouring countries, themselves oftentimes economically and socially unstable, have been hosting the largest bulk of the displaced populations – with local communities under particular stress.

This conference is devoted to understanding why people decide to move from their homes (with a particular focus on South-South migration), what effects migration has on the socio-economic development of low- and middle-income countries and how migration is governed in a multi-level policy environment.

Assistant Professor, Migration and Development

The ISS Strategic Plan 2019-24 pursues developing ISS further into a research-intensive university institute in The Hague, focussing on academic excellence and high societal relevance of its research and teaching. ISS considers engagement that is linking research and teaching to society, to be an important task of the university.

All ISS staff members participate in the Institute’s research programme ‘Global Development and Social Justice’. As part of its Research Strategy, the Institute currently pursues four multidisciplinary, cross-cutting research themes: environment and climate change; conflict and peace; social protection and inequality; and migration and diversity.

Consistent with our strategy and with an eye to current and future developments in the area of development studies, ISS is looking for two Assistant Professors in Migration and Development (tenure track).

Graduate Intern, Programming & Events

The HUB is seeking a graduate student for a paid HUB Programming and Events internship. Please spread the word and refer any candidates to apply by August 9 through Handshake. This is a great department to work for, and Adam is a great supervisor and mentor.

Global Alliance for Training in Health Equity Research (GATHER) T37 Training Grant

As a Fellow with the Global Alliance for Training in Health Equity Research (GATHER) at the Drexel Dornsife School of Public Health (DSPH), you will be supported while conducting health equity research in the United States and around the world.

Fellows will partner with mentors (DSPH faculty and GATHER advisory committee members), receive intensive skills-based research training, and have an opportunity to travel to one of four research sites in Brazil, Kenya, Mexico and Burkina Faso.

Becoming a GATHER Fellow offers doctoral students and postdoctoral trainees a chance to advance their careers and develop expertise in global health equity issues, while joining the DSPH’s extensive international network of public health scholars across Latin America and Africa.

GATHER Fellowships include:

  • Coverage of travel, housing and living expenses while at a global research site
  • A stipend and mentorship throughout the 6-9 month fellowship

Amy Bailey to Join CSDE as a Visiting Scholar and Chair of the Seminar Series

We are thrilled to welcome CSDE Affiliate and Alumna Amy Bailey as a CSDE Visiting Scholar for the upcoming year! Amy earned her PhD and MA in Sociology at the University of Washington and is joining us from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she is currently an Associate Professor of Sociology. Amy will be chairing the CSDE Seminar Series and is welcoming ideas and recommendations from the CSDE community (you can contact her here).

Bailey’s research examines race and inequality, with two key areas of focus. The first, which was the subject of her dissertation, examines the military, especially the interplay between individual and collective outcomes. This line of work examines a variety of questions, including the military’s effects on migration and population redistribution, the changing racialized dynamics between military employment and intergenerational mobility, and the links between community-level socioeconomic characteristics and military participation among young adults.

She is a 2015-16 Research Scholar at the Great Cities Institute, which supports her current project, “Transition to Adulthood for Working Class Youth: Institutions and Informal Practices in Local Communities.”  This project conceptualizes joining the armed forces as one of many options available to young people, and seeks to understand how institutional and informal processes may contribute to local variation in social mobility regimes for working class youth.

Her second area of research focuses on historical patterns of racial violence in the American South, more commonly known as lynching. She is particularly interested in the characteristics of individuals who were targeted for victimization, and with Stew Tolnay has written a book, Lynched: The Victims of Southern Mob Violence, on the characteristics of lynch victims that was published in 2015 by the University of North Carolina Press. She currently holds a grant from the National Science Foundation to build a database using census records for individuals who were threatened with lynching or survived an attempted lynching.

Bailey’s prior work has been published in journals including the American Journal of Sociology, The American Sociological Review, Population Research and Policy Review, and Historical Methods. She is a member of the Social Science History Association’s Publications Committee, and serves on the American Sociological Association’s Peace, War, and Social Conflict section’s administrative council.

Bailey joined the UIC Department of Sociology as an assistant professor in the summer of 2013. She previously held positions as an NIH funded research fellow at Princeton University’s Office of Population Research, and on the faculty at Utah State University. She also holds a BA in Women’s Studies and Health from the University of California at Santa Cruz.