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February 2026 : Regrets, she's had a few

Gender and regret of computer science and engineering degrees 

Social Science Research  |  MPC Members: Tom VanHeuvelen

• Women in computer science and, to a lesser extent, engineering fields report distinctly high levels of regret of their field of study compared to otherwise similar men
• Observed economic, occupation, industry, and sociodemographic characteristics don’t explain the high regret of women in these fields
• Efforts to open access to these critical computer science and engineering fields for women will likely fail unless deep cultural work is done to change the regret that many women feel after successfully entering these fields

July 2025 : Enriching Census Data with Mobile Positioning Data

Journal: Science Matters  |  MPC Members: Di Zhu and David Van Riper

• The enriched census data incorporates human visitations extracted from large-scale mobile positioning data 
• Identified and validated the potential home locations of 3.58 million anonymous mobile phone users across seven U.S. metropolitan areas
• Home detection results were used to enrich the socio-demographic profile of the places users visited
• The proposed data generation framework is adaptive, allowing future integration of diverse socio-demographic features at varying spatial and temporal scales
• This visitor-based census bridges the gap between conventional census and mobile phone data

May 2025 : US Excess Deaths Continued to Rise Even After the COVID-19 Pandemic

In 2022 and 2023, the United States saw over 1.5 million more deaths than expected. Excess US deaths have been increasing for decades, with working-age adults disproportionately affected. This trend continued during and after the pandemic.

The study published in JAMA Health Forum by Minnesota Population Center researchers and collaborators at Boston University, refers to these excess deaths as “missing Americans” because these deaths reflect people who would still be alive if US mortality rates were equal to the average mortality rate in other high-income countries. 

The study found: 

• U.S. death rates were one-third higher than death rates in 21 other wealthy nations, including Canada, Finland, Iceland and Portugal.
• In 2023, a staggering 45.9% of U.S. deaths under 65 years old would have been prevented if we had the death rate of other wealthy nations.
• Adults aged 25-44 in the U.S. are 2.5 times more likely to die than international peers.
• Excess deaths, meaning the number of deaths above the expected death rate, spiked during the COVID-19 pandemic and remain higher than peer nations in 2023, particularly for adults aged 25-44.

The findings reveal a continuing and worrying trend in worsening US mortality compared to other wealthy nations over the last four decades. 

“The 700,000 excess American deaths in 2023 is exactly what you’d predict based on prior rising trends, even if there had never been a pandemic,” said study coauthor Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, associate professor of sociology at the University of Minnesota. “These deaths are driven by long-running crises in drug overdose, gun violence, car collisions, and preventable cardiometabolic deaths.”

“The US has been in a protracted health crisis for decades, with health outcomes far worse than other high-income countries,” says lead author Jacob Bor, associate professor of global health and epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health. “This longer-run tragedy continued to unfold in the shadows of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Excess mortality is a nationwide problem, but the study revealed another staggering, yet persistent, statistic about younger and working-age Americans: 46 percent of all US deaths among people under 65 years old would not have occurred if the US had the age-specific death rates of its peers. This age-related disparity was evident before, during, and after the pandemic, and the 2023 excess death rate was only slightly lower than it was in 2021, at 50 percent, a finding detailed in a previous study by the researchers. 

“Imagine the lives saved, the grief and trauma averted, if the US simply performed at the average of our peers,” says lead author Jacob Bor, associate professor of global health and epidemiology at Boston University School of Public Health. “One out of every 2 US deaths under 65 years is likely avoidable. Our failure to address this is a national scandal.”

“These deaths reflect not individual choices, but policy neglect and deep-rooted social and health system failures,” says senior author Andrew Stokes, associate professor of global health at Boston University. “The COVID-19 pandemic exposed structural weaknesses—including gaps in healthcare access and social supports—that have continued to fuel premature deaths even after the acute phase of the pandemic ended.”

Stokes coauthored a separate study earlier this year that found that drug-related deaths were the single largest cause of mortality among adults ages 25-44. 

Future research is needed to pinpoint specific causes of the US’ disparity in mortality rates, but the researchers say the nation should look to the policies of its peer countries for insight into reducing health inequities and improving population health outcomes. 

“Other countries show that investing in universal healthcare, strong safety nets, and evidence-based public health policies leads to longer, healthier lives,” says Stokes. “Unfortunately, the US faces unique challenges; public distrust of government and growing political polarization have made it harder to implement policies that have proven successful elsewhere.”

“Deep cuts to public health, scientific research, safety net programs, environmental regulations, and federal health data could lead to a further widening of health disparities between the US and other wealthy nations, and growing numbers of excess—and utterly preventable—deaths to Americans,” cautions Dr. Bor. 

The study was also coauthored by Rafeya Raquib, research fellow in the Department of Global Health at SPH; Steffie Woolhandler, Distinguished Professor at the School of Urban Public Health at Hunter College; and David Himmelstein, lecturer in medicine at Cambridge Health Alliance/Harvard Medical School and Distinguished Professor at Hunter College.

See the original write up of this research by Jillian McKoy on the Boston University School of Public Health website. 

May 2025 : Stability and change in the academic qualifications of recent men and women college entrants

Research in Social Stratification and Mobility  |  MPC Member: Tom VanHeuvelen 

Policy makers, commentators, and some scholars have become increasingly concerned that men are falling further behind women in college attendance rates. There has been concern about which men and women, in terms of academic qualifications, attend colleges in the U.S. —particularly elite colleges that are associated with the greatest economic and social returns. MPC member Tom VanHeuvelen and co-author Natasha Quadlin set out to examine these questions in this era of heightened competitiveness using data from the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 and the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009. 

The research found: 

• Given equal qualifications, men and women had roughly equal chances of attending top colleges
• The largest changes were concentrated among less-prepared students attending less-selective institutions
• Less prepared men increasingly opt into two-year colleges, while less prepared women’s enrollment has stayed more or less constant, weakening women’s advantages at this level of education 
• Gender imbalances continue to favor of men at some top STEM-oriented institutions
• The study only look at actual enrollment rates, not admission applications

While commentary continues to focus on elite institutions, this research shows the recent changes at non-elite institutions are much more consequential for broader education trends.

March 2025 : Orphan discipline and child neglect: An analysis from 48 countries

Child Abuse & Neglect  |  MPC Authors: Anna Bolgrien, Elizabeth Heger Boyle, Mehr Munir, Miriam L. King

Orphan exposure to violent discipline is poorly understood, as research on parents' disciplinary practices largely focuses on biological families. The little research that exists has found that orphans are at reduced risk of harsh discipline but fails to explain why. This analysis from over 48 countries finds the lower odds of physical discipline are a result, largely, of neglect. 

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