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Exploratory workshop examines concept of community in context of climate change and energy transition

Jason Beckfield at podium at community and climate resilience exploratory workshop

The Harvard Center for Population and Development (HCPDS) co-sponsored a one-day workshop with the goal of bringing together policy experts and decision makers, researchers, and community-based advocates to explore the concept of “community” recently prioritized by federal legislation as it relates to climate change and energy transition. “Defining community for climate resilience and energy transition,” which was co-sponsored by The Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability Research at Harvard University…

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Beckfield leads interdisciplinary faculty and graduate student retreat to develop undergraduate environmental justice curriculum

Jason Beckfield leads a retreat at Wood's Hole on environmental justice

HCPDS Associate Director Jason Beckfield, PhD, led the first of three pilot retreats aimed at developing undergraduate curriculum in the “emerging field of environmental justice, or the convergence of environmental concerns with equity and civil rights” in response to the 2022 Report on the Future of Climate Education at Harvard University. Read about the retreat that took place at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in The Harvard Gazette. Photo credit:…

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NBC News reports: “Conservative policies linked to higher mortality among working-age people, except when it comes to marijuana”

Head shot of Jennifer Karas Montez and Jason Beckfield

A study published in PLOS ONE by our former RWJF Health & Society Scholar Jennifer Karas Montez, PhD, our associate director Jason Beckfield, PhD, and their colleagues has found that “more liberal policies on the environment, gun safety, labor, economic taxes, and tobacco taxes in a state [and more conservative marijuana policies] were associated with lower mortality in that state.”  

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Quantitatively analyzing the working conditions of the informally employed domestic worker in a new way

Cleaning supplies and a woman's hand in a rubber glove

What sort of working conditions (hazards and protections) are domestic workers informally employed by private households exposed to? Until now, there was not much quantitative analysis about patterns of workplace hazards faced by these workers. Harvard Pop Center Associate Director Jason Beckfield, faculty member Nancy Krieger, and their colleagues use latent class analysis in their paper to shed light on “distinct patterns of workplace hazards, … and [domestic workers’] exposures…

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Color-coded life expectancy: People in blue states are living longer than people in red

Map of the United State with Red and Blue States

Our former Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health & Society Scholar Jennifer Karas Montez, along with our associate director Jason Beckfield, and their colleagues have published a study in The Milbank Quarterly that looks at how changes in state policies since the 1970s have impacted life expectancy in the United States. Read about the study in this release… …  on alternet.org … on salon.com   Image: Wikimedia.org

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Throwback Thursday: Taking another look at social investment policies and gender health equity (2019 study)

Throwback Thursday news post

Our Associate Director Jason Beckfield, along with then Harvard Pop Center Graduate Student Affiliate Katherine Morris and their colleague Clare Bambra, published a study in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health that found that while European government spending on social investment policies was linked to lower levels of mortality related to cardiovascular disease across the genders, there was variation between the genders depending on the nature of the specific policies.

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How is COVID-19 impacting Asians, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the U.S.? This team is going to find out…

AAPI COVID-19 Project title and description

The research project AAPI COVID-19 Project launched by the Harvard Sociology Department in partnership with UNESCO will investigate the increase in racism aimed at Asians in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Harvard Pop Center Associate Director Jason Beckfield is serving as co-principal investigator on the team. Learn more in this piece in The Harvard Gazette.

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Jason Beckfield: “Rising inequality is not balanced by intergenerational mobility”

Head shot of Jason Beckfield

Jason Beckfield, our associate director and Harvard sociologist, COMMENTS on a study that documents intergenerational social mobility over the past 165 years, applauding the study’s strengths (e.g., differentiating between relative and absolute mobility; large amount of data) and outlining some of its limits (e.g., ethnicity and gender are weak spots in population composition; lack of explanation).