Pamela Jagger, Department of Public Policy, UNC Chapel Hill

This week, CSDE and the Daniel J. Evans School of Public Policy and Governance are bringing Pamela Jagger to UW to discuss approaches to promoting clean cooking in Sub-Saharan Africa. 

Globally between 3 and 4 billion people are affected by household air pollution (HAP) from cooking and heating with solid fuels (e.g., firewood and charcoal) and traditional stoves, with women and children in developing countries disproportionately burdened. Over 4.3 million deaths annually are attributed to HAP, the leading environmental health risk factor for morbidity and mortality. This presentation will review the scope and scale of the challenge of HAP in sub-Saharan Africa, consider what biomass based clean(er) cooking systems can deliver for health, climate, environment, and human welfare, and present findings on adoption and impacts from a clean cooking impact evaluation study in Rwanda. We will also discuss our ongoing impact evaluation of a novel cleaner cooking program which leverages the targeting mechanism of the Government of Malawi social cash transfer program to improve energy access for ultra-poor households.

CSDE encourages trainees to submit a project abstract for this winter’s Lightning Talks & Poster Session, which will take place at the end of the quarter as part of our Seminar Series. Selected trainees will introduce their project via lightning talks and continue the conversation over posters.

Proposals Due:  January 26th, 2018
Poster Session Date: March 9, 2018

This is a great opportunity to showcase your research to an excitingly diverse set of colleagues from across the university, make new connections with scholars working in similar areas, and celebrate your continued development as a strong demographic researcher.

Affiliate Adrian Raftery, Professor of Statistics and Sociology, and colleagues recently published an article in Population Studies that addresses the United Nations’ methods for performing probabilistic population projections. In the article, the authors offer a simpler approach to probabilistic population projections for nations with generalized HIV/AIDS epidemics, one which also happens to align better with projection methods the UN employs for other nations. In an out-of-sample cross-validation experiment, the authors’ proposed approach provided projections that were akin to but simpler than the Spectrum/Estimation and Projection Package (EPP) model the UN currently uses.

Affiliate Scott Allard, Professor at the Evans School of Public Policy and Governance, wrote a recent opinion piece for The Hill that addresses our nation’s rising income inequality. According to Allard, conclusions from recent findings about trends for wealth inequality and wage growth “resemble language more commonly used to describe sea level rise and climate change: The forces of inequality are becoming stronger with more intense and extreme consequences." Allard goes on to describe the similarities between income inequality and climate change—in the context of policy making—issues which affects millions of Americans on a daily basis, are vast in scale, have complex roots, and for which “current federal policy provides no relief." 

Affiliate Rachel Heath, Assistant Professor of Economics and CSDE Seminar Coordinator, was cited in a Dhaka Tribune article highlighting the positive socio-economic impacts of the ready-made garment (RMG) industry in Bangladesh. The RMG industry has not only created jobs, reduced poverty, and enabled the nation to achieve its target GDP growth, but has also empowered women by providing them with employment opportunities and enabling them to build better lives for their children, particularly girls. The article points to a study by Heath and a colleague at Yale University, which demonstrated that there has been a 27% increase in the number of girls attending school in Bangladesh compared to before the RMG industry emerged.