May 2, 2018

Last week the deputy director and four faculty affiliates of the UC Davis Center for Poverty Research (CPR) presented their research at the annual meeting of the Population Association of America (PAA) in Denver. Their papers were among those selected from a pool of 4,000 submissions for 254 oral sessions that represent the interdisciplinary nature of population research and cover diverse population issues.

The PAA is a scientific and professional organization of nearly 3,000 members dedicated to promoting human progress through research related human population problems.  The annual event that began on Thursday included contributions from economists, demographers, sociologists, public health researchers and others in the broad field of population research.

The Center for Poverty Research was represented by both faculty and graduate students, who presented in oral and poster sessions. Ann Huff Stevens, Deputy Director of the Center and a professor of economics, presented her work on the dynamics of deep poverty in the United States.

Chloe East, a former CPR graduate student affiliate, presented the paper “Multi-generational Impacts of Childhood Access to the Safety Net: Early-Life Exposure to Medicaid and the Next Generation’s Health.” The paper was co-authored by Marianne Page, Director of CPR and a professor of economics. Page recently presented this work at the meeting of the Children’s and Economics of Education Program of the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Erin Hamilton and Ryan Finnigan, both CPR faculty affiliates in sociology, presented research related to human migration, a focus area of the meeting.  Hamilton, who studies the consequences of migration for migrants, their families and their communities, presented recent research on health disparities among documented and undocumented U.S. farm workers in a session on immigrant health and mortality. She also co-authored a poster titled “The Geography of Migration of Children from the United States to Mexico: Origins, Crossings, and Destinations.”

Cynthia van der Werf, a CPR graduate student affiliate, gave an oral presentation on academic achievement among refugees and natives as part of a session on forced migration and high-income receiving societies. Ryan Finnigan also presented on the topic of human migration. The research he presented concerned the effect of high-income migration on the housing cost burden in the United States. He also served as a discussant on a panel on demographic perspectives on changing labor force participation.

Caitlin Patler, also a CPR faculty affiliate in sociology, presented at a session on mass incarceration and inequality. Her talk, titled “The Diminished Returns to Human Capital for Workers with a Criminal Record”, covered issues of stigmatization. In the same session, CPR graduate student affiliate Siobhan O’Keefe gave an oral presentation on the relationship between fertility and sentencing severity.

Noli Brazil, a CPR faculty affiliate in human ecology, presented in two poster sessions, as the primary author of a poster titled “Life Course-linked Mobility and the Well-being Consequences for Mexican Internal and External Migrants” and as a co-author of a poster on charter school expansion.  He served as the discussant for a session on advanced spatial analysis.

Of the CPR showing at the event, Ann Huff Stevens said, “It was a great opportunity to showcase the contributions of CPR faculty and students to a variety of research areas.  The type of population and demographic research promoted by PAA is interdisciplinary and highly applicable to current policy challenges, both of which are also central to CPR’s mission.”

The event was held April 26-28, 2018 in Denver, Colorado.