Access to healthcare and financial risk protection for older adults in Mexico

David Canning and Michael Reich recently co-authored a study in BMJ analyzing the effects of Social Security and Seguro Popular health insurances in Mexico. Previous studies have documented the benefits of these insurances as compared to no insurance, but how do they compare to each other?

Nearly half of children in Tanzania whose mother died during or near birth don’t survive past 10th birthday

Harvard Pop Center Research Core Director Jocelyn Finlay, PhD, is lead author on a study published in Maternal and Child Health Journal that reveals a much higher mortality rate for those children who lost their mother during or shortly after birth, suggesting that improving health care of mothers, particularly while pregnant and during birth, will help to save children’s lives. Harvard Pop Center Associate Director David Canning, PhD, is also…

How does female literacy, under-5 mortality rate, and poverty level influence declining fertility rates in India?

Harvard Pop Center researchers, including visiting scientist Sanjay K. Mohanty, PhD, faculty member Gunther Fink, PhD, and associate director David Canning, PhD, have produced a PGDA working paper that explores the distal determinants of fertility decline across 640 Indian districts.

How can you statistically correct for missing data and selection bias in HIV prevalence estimates?

Missing data is a common problem in HIV research due to non-participation in testing, and selection bias can occur if non-participation in testing is associated with HIV status. For example, longitudinal data suggests that individuals who know or suspect that they are HIV positive are less likely to participate in HIV surveys. Four researchers from Harvard Pop Center, including Mark McGovern, PhD, Till Bärnighausen, MD, Joshua Salomon, PhD,  and David Canning,…

Videos of Speaker Presentations at 50th Anniversary Symposium

In honor of its 50th anniversary, the Harvard Pop Center recently held a symposium titled Reimagining Societies in the Face of Demographic Change that featured presentations by Julio Frenk, Lisa Berkman, Babatunde Osotimehin, Jack Rowe, and Sir Michael Marmot, as well as a panel discussion including Pop Center Associate Director David Canning and faculty members Amitabh Chandra, SV Subramanian (Subu), and Mary Waters. Video recordings of these presentations and discussions are…

The Optimal Age of Retirement

What’s the best age at which to retire? This question is certainly a current hot topic. David Canning, who co-directs the Pop Center, and David Bloom, head of the Program on the Global Demography of Aging, have developed a new model for predicting the optimal age of retirement and have published their work in The Scandinavian Journal of Economics. Their model predicts continuing declines in the optimal retirement age, despite rising life…

Mortality Expectation and Fertility Choice

Pop Center faculty members, David Bloom and David Canning, and PGDA fellows, Isabel Gunther and Sebastian Linnemayr, analyze the role of mortality expectations on population growth in their paper, “Fertility Choice, Mortality Expectations, and Interdependent Preferences An Empirical Analysis“.