In Years 1 and 2 of the training program, Trainees will:
a. Meet frequently with their faculty mentor(s)
b. Complete four courses:
- An "overview" course:
Population Methods and Issues in the U.S. and the Global South (PA 5301)
This course surveys population trends and issues and teaches basic demographic methods. Topics include fertility, mortality, and the demographic transition; population growth and the environment; infant mortality; sexuality and the control of fertility; US trends in family structure; and aging. - A demographic techniques course:
Advanced Demographic Methods: Sex, Death & Mobility: Population Modeling (SOC 8890)
Populations are made up of people whose lives are changing all the time. This course covers population modeling techniques from the demographic tradition, organized around life transitions. These techniques excel at describing social and epidemiological changes occurring along multiple time scales simultaneously; identifying the inequalities lurking beneath population averages; relating multiple dimensions of population structure; and figuring out what population a research question is really about. - Two seminars out of this list of four:
Economic Demography (PA 8331)
This course will expose you to the major economic theories in demography, including those of migration, mortality, fertility, marriage, family formation, and others. We will also discuss recent empirical work on these same topics and explore the difficulties of causal inference in demography.
Global & U.S. Perspectives on Health and Mortality (PA 8461)
This course examines issues in health, mortality, and aging, focusing on differentials in health and mortality across time, space, and social groups.
Human Fertility and the Family (HIST 8970)
This course examines trends, differentials, and transitions in fertility and the family, focusing on the fertility transition in developed and developing countries and economic, social, and biological factors affecting reproduction.
Migration and Migrants in Demographic Perspective (SOC 8090)
This course provides a demographic point of entry into major theoretical, methodological, empirical, and substantive debates on international and internal migration (as a type of transition) and migrants (as a status or type of actor) drawing from such disciplines as economics, geography, public policy, sociology, and statistics.
Each of these courses will allow students to work with MPC data products and to write seminar papers that might become second year research papers.
c. Regularly attend MPC research seminars and workshops and meet with visiting scholars when they come to MPC to give talks or hold project meetings
d. Work closely—for 20 hours per week, year round—on population research. This research will ordinarily involve some combination of data infrastructure work on MPC data projects and substantive research, and will be oriented toward training students to work with data, conduct analyses, and write and present papers.
e. Attend and participate in the PAA meetings
f. Write a second year demographic research paper under the close supervision of their faculty mentor(s). This paper may build on collaborative work, but should represent the student's independent empirical population research; it may have previously been developed as part of a course. The paper should be of a form, style, and quality suitable for submission to a population research journal. Trainees will also be encouraged to develop the paper with help from MPC paper surgery groups and/or through participating in the MPC writing hunker.
g. Defend the second year paper and demonstrate general competence in population research in a hearing by the end of year two. The hearing will be conducted by a committee of three members of the Graduate Faculty in Population Studies.
In Year 3 of the training program, Trainees will:
a. Meet frequently with their faculty mentor(s)
b. Regularly attend MPC research seminars and workshops and meet with visiting scholars when they come to MPC to give talks or hold project meetings
c. Continue to work closely— for 20 hours per week, year round—on population research. This research will ordinarily involve some combination of data infrastructure work and substantive research, and will be oriented toward training students to work with data, conduct analyses, and write and present papers.
d. Attend and participate in the PAA meetings
e. Pursue publication of their second year paper