Winter/Spring 2022

2/18: Across much of sub-Saharan Africa, HIV-related mortality has dramatically declined thanks to advancements in antiretroviral therapy. However, while many are now living longer, they are also experiencing higher rates of geriatric illnesses and other non-communicable diseases. The consequences of population aging in rural, low-income settings have not received much of the research spotlight, until now. Researchers at The Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies are working in partnership with MRC/Wits Rural Public Health and Health Transitions Research Unit (Agincourt) at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and The INDEPTH Network (a global network of health and demographic surveillance systems) to explore the biological, social, and economic determinants of chronic diseases in an understudied, aging population, and how these findings can help us better understand aging in a global context.

In this one-hour virtual seminar, Harvard researchers will provide an overview of Health and Aging in Africa: A Longitudinal Study of an INDEPTH Community in South Africa (HAALSI), a cohort study following approximately 5,000 men and women over the age of 40 in rural South Africa. The project, which began in 2013 and is currently in its third wave of data collection, captures indicators related to illnesses often seen in aging populations — CVD, diabetes, and dementia, to name a few. The seminar will present the project goals (including harmonization with other global “sister” studies to the Health and Retirement Studies), and describe the HAALSI cohort, projects, surveys, waves, and available data, including information on how to access data. It will also introduce HAALSI’s ancillary project dedicated to the epidemiology of dementia, which incorporates additional cognitive, clinical, and biomarker data which is harmonized with other international dementia studies.

3/25: Aashish Gupta, PhD, David E. Bell Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presented “Mortality surveillance in the tropics: Evidence from the ‘recent household members’ deaths’ approach in India.”

4/22: Nino Cricco, PhD student in sociology, Harvard University, presented “Own earnings, spouses’ earnings, and U.S. men and women’s intergenerational mobility.”

Fall 2021

9/24: Delia Furtado, PhD, associate professor of economics, University of Connecticut, and visiting scientist, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presented “Does immigration improve quality of care in nursing homes?”

10/22: Adedotun Ogunbajo, PhD, Yerby Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, presented “Acceptability of COVID-19 vaccines among Black immigrants living in the United States.”

11/5: Daniel Arias, PhD Student in Population Health Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and Harvard Pop Center graduate student affiliate, presented “Financial incentives for COVID-19 vaccination: Econometric evidence from U.S. state lotteries.”

12/3: Frina Lin, PhD student in public policy, Harvard University, and Harvard Pop Center graduate student affiliate, presented “Neighborhoods and racial disparities in preventive care.”

12/10: Leah Abrams, PhD, Sloan Fellow on Aging and Work, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presented “The role of functioning in the association between health and working.”

Winter/Spring 2021

1/29: Enryka Christopher, research assistant, Harvard Pop Center, and  Tasdik Hasan, MBBS MPH PGDDM MSc (GMH) PhD candidate, project director at The Johns Hopkins University, presented “Puff or pass: do social media and social interactions influence smoking behaviour of university students? A cross-sectional mixed methods study from Dhaka, Bangladesh.” Closed audience – invitees will receive an email.

2/5: Anna Grummon, PhD, MSPH, Bell Fellow at Harvard Pop Center, presented “Do calorie labeling laws spur product reformulation? A longitudinal analysis of supermarket foods.” Closed audience – invitees will receive an email.

2/19: Aayush Khadka, PhD candidate in population health sciences (Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health) and Harvard Pop Center graduate student affiliate, presented “Prenatal air pollution exposure and pregnancy loss in the United States.” 

2/26: Nidhiya Menon, PhD, professor, department of economics, International Business School, Brandeis University, presented “Impact of pollution from coal on the anemic status of children and women: Evidence from India.”

3/5: Yanyue Wang (Adelina), PhD, post-doctoral fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), presented “The impact of alternative types of elder care providers: Stratified IV analysis with machine learning using nursing home exits.”

3/26: Holly Hummer, PhD candidate in sociology, Harvard University, presented “Pathways to non-parenthood: Insights from qualitative data.” Closed audience – invitees will receive an email.

4/9 – SPECIAL SLOAN SEMINAR ON AGING AND WORK, Joanna Lahey, PhD, associate professor, The Bush School of Government & Public Service, Texas A&M University, presented “Age and the labor market for Hispanics in the United States.”

4/23 – SPECIAL SLOAN SEMINAR ON AGING AND WORK, Gwen Fisher, PhD, associate professor, director, Occupational Health Psychology Concentration, Colorado State University, presented “Job characteristics and later life cognitive functioning.”

Fall 2020

9/18: Sunetra Gupta, PhD, professor of theoretical epidemiology, department of zoology, University of Oxford, presented “A crisis of pathos in the global response to COVID-19.”

9/25: Justin Rodgers, PhD, postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presented “Quantifying heterogeneity in treatment effects among children in the Head Start Impact Study.”

10/2: Elyse Jennings, PhD, research scientist, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presented “Marital experiences and depressive symptoms in rural South Africa.”

10/16: Maleah Fekete, PhD student in sociology, Harvard University presented “Comparing depression rates across nations.”

10/23: Maja-Emilia Marcus, doctoral student and research fellow, Chair of Development Economics/ Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), Georg-August-University of Göttingen, presented “Noncommunicable diseases in LMICs: The global state of care and insights from a screening intervention in Indonesia.”

10/30: Leah Gose, PhD student in sociology, Harvard University presented “Reimagining the Social Safety Net: What the aid provision efforts of local community organizations can tell us about disadvantage and access.”

11/6: Darina Bassil, PhD, MPH, research associate, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies (HAALSI Dementia Project) presented “Incidence of dementia in cancer survivors: Evidence from a large UK population cohort study.”

11/20: Sung Park, PhD, Sloan Fellow on Aging and Work, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presented “Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Work and Cognition.”

12/4: Meagan Farrell, PhD, research associate, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies; project director, HAALSI Dementia Study, presented “Language skills, life experience, and cognitive reserve in aging South Africans.”

Winter/Spring 2020

1/31: Daniel Prinz, doctoral student in health policy and economics, Harvard University, presented “Employer responsibility for disability insurance in the contingent workforce: Evidence from the Netherlands.”

2/7: Omar Karlsson, PhD, Takemi Fellow, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, presented “Household technology and child health.”

2/14:  Marcel Goldberg, MD, PhD, lecturer, Paris Descartes University, and Marie Zins, MD, PhD, lecturer, Paris Descartes University, presented findings from CONSTANCES, a  population-based, epidemiological national cohort of over 200,000 adults in France.

2/21:  Brian Xiao, doctoral student, sociology, Harvard University, presented “Material hardship and depression.”

2/28: Maria Glymour, ScD, professor of  epidemiology and biostatistics, UCSF, presented “Alzheimer’s disease and dementia: Learning more with instrumental variables-inspired approaches.”

3/13: Elyse Jennings, PhD, research scientist, HCPDS, presented “Marital experiences and onset of depressive symptoms in rural South Africa.”

3/27: Taha Choukhmane, PhD, NBER postdoctoral fellow, Economics of an Aging Workforce program, presented “Default options and retirement saving dynamics.”

4/3: Angelina Grigoryeva, PhD, Bell Fellow, HCPDS, and assistant professor, department of sociology, University of Toronto, presented TBA.

4/10: Angela Dixon, PhD, Bell Fellow, HCPDS, presented TBA.

4/17: SPECIAL SEMINAR – PAA Practice Talks

1. Muqi Guo, MS,  data analyst and coordinator, Willows Impact Evaluation project, Department of Global Health & Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, presented “Understanding the effects of family planning counseling on short birth intervals: A mediation analysis of a cluster-randomized intervention in Nepal.”
2. Sung Park, PhD, Sloan Fellow on Aging and Work, HCPDS, presented “Black-White differences in siblings’ co-residence with and financial support to aging parents.”

5/1: Sloan Seminar on Aging and Work, speaker and seminar title, TBA

5/8: Sloan Seminar on Aging and Work, speaker and seminar title, TBA

Fall 2019

9/6: Robert Manduca, doctoral student in sociology & social policy, Harvard University, presented “Defining economic exclusion in an era of extreme inequality.”

9/13: Beth Truesdale, PhD, research associate, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presented “Overtime: America’s aging workforce and the future of ‘working longer’.”

9/20: Onur Altindag, PhD, assistant professor of economics, Bentley University; and visiting scientist, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presented “The impact of the introduction of the MMR vaccine on all-cause infectious disease hospitalizations in Denmark.”

10/4:  Joshua Wassink, PhD, NSF postdoctoral research fellow, Princeton University Office of Population Research; and visiting scholar, Harvard University Sociology Department, presented “The new system of Mexican migration.”

10/11: Ece Ozcelik, ScD candidate, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, presented “Impact of Brazil’s More Doctors Program on avoidable hospitalizations for cardiovascular conditions.”

**Cancelled: 10/18: Ethan Raker, doctoral student in sociology, Harvard University, presented “Neighborhood inequality and post-disaster aid in United States.”

11/1: Robbee Wedow, postdoctoral research fellow, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, presented “The genetics of social science outcomes.”

11/8: Julia Rohr, project director of HAALSI, HCPDS, presented “The effect of antenatal contraceptive counseling and post-partum IUD insertion services on contraceptive use and pregnancy in Tanzania.”

11/15: Adel Daoud, David E. Bell Postdoctoral Fellow, HCPDS, presented “Observatory of poverty: Harnessing machine intelligence to detect poverty and inequality from satellite images.”

12/6: Sloan Seminar on Aging and Work: Jack Smalligan, senior policy fellow in the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC, presented “Policies for an aging labor force: Keeping workers employed after health shocks.”

12/13: Sloan Seminar on Aging and Work: Nancy Berlinger, PhD, research scholar at The Hastings Center in Garrison, NY, presented “Ethical challenges of aging societies.”

Winter/Spring 2019

February 8: Hannah Leslie, research associate, Department of Global Health & Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, presented “Quality of primary care clinics in rural Bushbuckridge, South Africa: measurement and consideration of population effects.”

February 15: Heinrich Kögel, doctoral candidate, Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA) and the University of Munich, and visiting graduate student, HCPDS, presented “Heterogeneous Effects of Poverty on Cognition.”

February 22: Emilie Courtin, PhD, Bell postdoctoral fellow, HCPDS, presented “The effect of expanding the earned income tax credit on physical health: Experimental evidence.”

March 1: Linda Zhao, doctoral student in sociology at Harvard, presented “Horizontal inequality and outgroup trust within communities.”

March 8: Daniel Prinz, doctoral candidate in health policy and economics, Harvard University, presented “Employers and disability insurance: Evidence from the Netherlands.”

March 29: Andrew Garin, PhD, postdoctoral fellow, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), presented “Alternative work arrangements throughout the life cycle: Evidence from US tax returns.”

April 5: Leslie Adams, PhD, Bell postdoctoral fellow, HCPDS, presented “Re-examining the mental health paradox among U.S and South African Blacks: a within-group measurement approach.”

April 19: Ludovica Gazze, PhD,postdoctoral scholar, University of Chicago Energy and Environment Lab, presented “Pipe works, drinking water quality, and children’s health: The effects of pipe replacement on lead levels.”

Fall 2018

Sept 14: Alina Schnake-Mahl, doctoral candidate, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, presented Suburbanization of poverty, gentrification, and health: Changing geographic inequalities and implications for health care access and health equity.

Sept 21: Adel Daoud, PhD, Bell Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presented Deploying machine learning in the service of policy evaluation: Economic crisis, global poverty, and inequality.

Sept 28: Christopher Jamil de Montgomery, doctoral candidate in public health, University of Copenhagen, and visiting graduate student, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presentrf Tracing out the life courses of refugee children growing up in Denmark through registry data: Inequalities in health care use and social exclusion during the youth-to-adulthood transition.

Oct 5: Matilda Hellman, PhD, research director, University of Helsinki Centre for Research on Addiction, Control and Governance, and visiting scientist, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presentrf Agency as a structuring principle: a theory of cultural stratification.

Oct 12: Kimberly Fox, PhD, research associate, and Sydney Johnson, MS, research assistant, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presented Improving worker well-being: A systematic review of workplace interventions.

Oct 19: Fredrik Johansson, PhD, postdoctoral associate, Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) at MIT presented Causal effect estimation from a machine learning perspective.

Oct 26: Rockli Kim, ScD, postdoctoral fellow, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presented Variation in health between and within populations: Applying multilevel perspective to child and adult anthropometry.

Nov 2:  No Seminar this week.

Nov 9: Meagan Farrell, PhD, research associate, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies, presented Domain-specific patterns of cognitive gender differences in older rural South Africans: The influence of education, wealth, and health factors.

Nov 30: Sloan Seminar on Aging and Work –  Michael North, PhD, assistant professor of management and organizations, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, New York University presented Intergenerational tensions in the workplace and beyond: Individual, interpersonal, institutional, and international. Co-sponsored by the NBER Sloan Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program on the Economics of an Aging Workforce.

Spring 2018

February 16: An empirical investigation of the link between demand for sons and domestic violence in Turkey, presented by Onur Altindag, PhD, assistant professor of economics, Bentley University

February 23: Sexual heterophily: Women, minorities, and HIV, presented by Roland Pongou, PhD, associate professor of economics, University of Ottowa

April 6: Comparability problems and choice in population studies, presented by Anders Herlitz, PhD, research fellow and visiting scientist, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, and the 2017 Sissela Bok Ethics and Population Research Prize winner

April 20: Do dads want to be there? Men’s intended use of unpaid parental leave in Spain, presented by Xiana Bueno García, PhD, Marie Skłodowska Curie Postdoctoral Fellow (2016-2019) Harvard University

May 4: Disease as an impediment to neighbourhood attainment in the PSID presented by Lyndsey Anne Rolheiser, PhD, postdoctoral research fellow, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies

May 11: Household financialization and wealth presented by Angelina Grigoryeva, PhD, Harvard Bell Fellow, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies

Fall 2017

September 15: Contraceptive autonomy in Burkina Faso: A new approach to family planning measurement, Leigh Senderowicz, PhD candidate, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

September 22: Early-life correlates and stress-related implications of work-family circumstances among young adult women, Adam Lippert, PhD, assistant professor of sociology, University of Colorado Denver

September 29: Beyond life expectancy at birth: A cross-country analysis of convergence and disparities, 1950-2015, William Joe, PhD, visiting scientist, Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

October 6: Exploring the relationship between organizational features and care providers’ experiences in primary care practices: A mixed method study, Lynn Lingrui Liu, PhD candidate, Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health

October 13: The population health benefits of improved blood pressure control in Indonesia: Estimates of life expectancy gains using parametric g-formulas, Nikkil Sudharsanan, PhD, Bell Fellow, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies

October 20: The cyclicality of informal care, Yulya Truskinovsky, PhD, Sloan Fellow on Aging and Work, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies

October 27:  Maternal social support, hardship, and children’s schooling after displacement: Evidence from low-income families during Hurricane Katrina, Ethan Raker, PhD candidate, Department of Sociology, Harvard University

November 3: Evidence for an expansion of disability among successive Mexican cohorts, 2001-2015,
Collin Payne, PhD, Harvard Bell Fellow, Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies

November 17: Inequality and working conditions, Daniel Prinz, PhD candidate, Departments of Health Policy and Economics, Harvard University, and a pre-doctoral fellow in disability policy research at National Bureau of Economic Research

***

In December, we were pleased to welcome two distinguished faculty who work in the area of “Aging and Work.” These seminars were co-sponsored by the NBER Sloan Post-Doctoral Fellowship Program on the Economics of an Aging Workforce:

December 1: Are We Healthy Enough to Work Longer? Evidence from the U.S. and Europe, Courtney Coile, PhD, professor of economics, and director, Knapp Social Science Center, Wellesley College

December 8: Women working longer: Labor market implications of providing family care, Sean Fahle, PhD, associate professor of economics, University of Buffalo, The State University of New York