Announcements

April 2019: Extreme Weather Disasters, Economic Losses via Migration, and Widening Spatial Inequality in the U.S.

MPC Member and Assistant Professor of Sociology Jack DeWaard has been awarded an NSF grant (SES - 1850871) for a new project entitled "Extreme Weather Disasters, Economic Losses via Migration, and Widening Spatial Inequality in the U.S." DeWaard and Co-PIs Katherine Curtis (University of Wisconsin-Madison) and Elizabeth Fussel (Brown University) aim to conduct the first study of what they call economic losses via migration from affected areas after extreme weather disasters in the U.S. Learn more about this exciting new project. [link to full story, this paragraph plus one below on the website]

In 2017, the U.S. set a new record of $313 billion in economic losses from sixteen billion dollar extreme weather disasters. Economic losses from extreme weather disasters are spatially concentrated in states like Florida and are remarkably stable over time. While there are many reasons that people stay in disaster-prone areas, others choose to migrate or are forced to leave, some temporarily and others permanently. As economic actors, migrants take with them myriad economic activities that constitute economic losses that have not been studied in previous research. This project will be the first to document the size of economic losses via migration from affected areas in the U.S. after extreme weather events. Because migration necessarily connects places to one another, the project will also document whether and to what extent such economic losses via migration contribute to changing spatial inequality in the U.S. as a whole. Project results will provide input into policies concerning how to mitigate the economic costs of extreme weather disasters in the U.S., thus contributing to disaster recovery and economic prosperity.

March 2019: Dr. Elizabeth Boyle Publishes New Study in the Journal of Marriage and Family

Elizabeth Boyle (MPC faculty member and professor of sociology) and Joseph Svec (Human Development and Family Studies, Iowa State University) recently published a paper in the Journal of Marriage and Family entitled Intergenerational Transmission of Female Genital Cutting: Community and Marriage Dynamics in which they examine characteristics of households and communities implicated in the intergenerational transmission of gender inequality and particularly female genital cutting. This study provides new insights into how women, families, and communities can disrupt the intergenerational transmission of behaviors associated with institutionalized gender inequality.

February 2019: Dr. Elizabeth Wrigley-Field Publishes New Research in Demography

MPC Member Elizabeth Wrigley-Field published new research on infectious diseases and racial inequality, along with co-authors James Feigenbaum and Chris Muller. In the first half of the twentieth century, the rate of death from infectious disease in the United States fell precipitously. Although this decline is well-known and well-documented, there is surprisingly little evidence about whether it took place uniformly across the regions of the U.S. We use data on infectious disease deaths from all reporting U.S. cities to describe regional patterns in the decline of urban infectious mortality from 1900 to 1948. We report three main results: First, urban infectious mortality was higher in the South in every year from 1900 to 1948. Second, the timing of the infectious mortality decline was different in southern cities than in cities in the other regions. Third, comparatively high infectious mortality in southern cities was driven overwhelmingly by extremely high infectious mortality among African Americans. From 1906 to 1920, African Americans in cities experienced a rate of death from infectious disease greater than what urban whites experienced during the 1918 flu pandemic. 

For more information, read the full article in NBER, catch a version of it in VOX EU, and follow a Twitter thread about their project.

January 2019: Negotiating Careers After Baby is Born

MPC Training Director Elect Ann Meier and MPC Director Rob Warren, in collaboration with Kelly Musick at Cornell University and Sheela Kennedy at Michigan, have received an NICHD grant to study “Trends in Couples’ Work Patterns after Childbirth.” Using four decades of data available through IPUMS CPS, they will link couples longitudinally across the full 16 months of their Current Population Survey participation to assess changes in husbands’ and wives’ work and earnings following a first birth. Their analysis will address long-term trends in how couples’ work and earnings change following the birth of their first child and the implications of these couple-level processes for changes in aggregate inequality over time. Their research will address critical gaps in the literature regarding how couples sort into marriage and how they negotiate roles within marriage.

January 2019: Dr. Carolyn Liebler Receives New Grant from Russell Sage Foundation

MPC Member Carolyn Liebler, associate professor in the Department of Sociology, has received a new grant from the Russell Sage Foundation entitled “Racial Identities and Life Choices among Mixed-Heritage People in the USA.” This project seeks to understand intertwined aspects (e.g., racial identifications, spousal choices, and upbringing of children) of the lives of multiracial people from three distinct racial backgrounds using both qualitative interviews and quantitative analyses of census data. Together with collaborator Miri Song at the University of Kent, Liebler aims to answer three key questions: How do a person's race and ancestry responses link to their choice of spouse and the racial identification of their children? Does the answer to this question vary by location in the United States? And, does it vary across different mixed-heritage groups?

Their research will examine family-level effects of variation in the identities of mixed-heritage Black/White, Asian/White, and American Indian/White people. This research will contribute to a fuller and more nuanced understanding of the diversity of the mixed-heritage population in different parts of the US, and via in-depth interviews, variation in practices and decisions that mixed-heritage parents report in relation to their spouses and their children.