Population Research Discovery Seminars

Co-Sponsor(s):

Population Health Initiative

Interest in the effect of climate change on major demographic processes is burgeoning. While our understanding of the linkages between climate, mortality, and migration are relatively well developed, the effects of rising temperatures on human fertility rates are not.  In this lecture, Dr. Wilde will discuss this research area, its history and development, and how he and his coauthors are filling knowledge gaps in this field.  After discussing the aggregate effect of climate change on fertility, he will outline what is known about the mechanisms which drive the link between temperature and birthrates.  Finally, he will end by describing where our understanding is still limited, providing a roadmap for future researchers to follow.

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Joshua Wilde is a Senior Researcher in the Nuffield Department of Population Health at the University of Oxford, and a Research Scientist in the Population Research Center at Portland State University. He is currently one of two Editors-in-chief of the Population and Development Review. He also co-chairs the IUSSP Panel on Covid-19, Fertility, and the Family.  He was recently awarded a €2 million European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant, with which he will lead the SEXRATIO project in the Leverhulme Center for Demographic Research at the University of Oxford, which aims to study the determinants of natural sex ratios at birth. His research is in the field of Demography, Demographic Economics, and Development Economics, with an emphasis on the causes and economic effects of fertility change, at both the macro and micro levels. His focus is on four major research areas:  1) macroeconomics effects of demographic change, particularly the Demographic Dividend, 2) climate change and fertility, 3) health shocks on fertility and prenatal mortality, and 4) gender discrimination and birth outcomes.

He has published in leading journals in both the fields of economics and demography, such as the American Economic Review, the European Economic Review, Demography, and the Population and Development Review. He the co-creator of the Canning-Karra-Wilde (CKW) model, one of the leading tools used to calculate the Demographic Dividend – or the economic benefit to fertility declines on national income in high-fertility settings. He and his coauthors are also the winners of the IPUMS International Faculty Research Award for their work analyzing the effects of temperature shocks at the time of conception on long-run human capital outcomes in sub-Saharan Africa.

Before coming to the Oxford and Portland State, Joshua was the deputy head of the Laboratory of Fertility and Well-Being at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, and an assistant professor of Economics at the University of South Florida. He earned his PhD in economics from Brown University in 2011.