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OverviewThe Social Science Division of the University of Chicago was the first academic division of a major university to be devoted entirely to the social sciences. For many years, demography has been a major focus of study at the University through the Department of Sociology. In 1946, sociologist Philip Hauser founded the Population Research Center, and since that time, the department has supported, trained, and housed a variety of prominent demographers. Recognizing the interdisciplinary nature of demographic research, in 1985 the Division of Social Sciences created a formal Committee on Demographic Training. The Committee promotes interdisciplinary training in population studies, demography, and the study of the demographics and economics of aging at the University of Chicago and draws on the expertise of over forty teaching faculty from departments within the Division of Social Sciences (e.g., economics, education, history, psychology, sociology, and statistics) as well as from several professional schools including the Graduate School of Business, the Pritzker School of Medicine, and the Harris School of Public Policy Studies. These faculty members coordinate their courses and workshops, work with students from all areas within the university, and through the Committee, facilitate and encourage the study of demographic topics and issues. The Chair of the Committee works closely with the faculty members who head the Population Research Center and the Center on Demography and Economics of Aging, as well as with the Principal Investigator of the Hewlett Foundation Training Grant. These faculty members and other appointed members constitute an executive body that assures the coordination of research and training activities across the many faculty, students, and disciplines. The Committee also selects pre-doctoral and postdoctoral fellows, establishes all program requirements, coordinates curricula across departments, administers training fellowships, supervises trainee research projects, and organizes postdoctoral research training activities. The Committee and both research centers support a weekly seminar series, The Demography Workshop, to foster interdisciplinary dialogue between the faculty and the trainees. The program is very broad, offering general survey courses on demographic methods, statistical demography, economics, and sociology, as well as specialized courses on fertility, stratification, human ecology, family, migration, mathematical demography, ethnic relations, aging, and the labor force. The core program places a strong emphasis on formal demographic methods, statistical techniques, and analytic methods that can be applied to census information, survey data, and vital statistics. In economics, the program is strong in behavioral modeling, emphasizing the study of motivations and responses of primary actors (e.g., individuals, families, schools, governments, and social structures) that affect and are affected by demographic phenomena. In sociology, the program places special emphasis on quantitative empirical research, focusing on the family, stratification, migration, urban ecology, race and ethnic relations, as well as fertility and mortality. The program offers research exposure and training with extensive historical and geographic coverage, with strong emphases on U.S. demography, historical studies of demographic change in other developed countries, and studies of current population processes and transformations in developing nations. Background HistoryNICHD-funded since 1986, the Committee on Demographic Training (CDT) promotes interdisciplinary training in population studies at the University of Chicago. Its faculty has grown in recent years, with several new arrivals at the University in Public Policy, the Medical School, and the Business School. Currently, the programs have over forty teaching faculty. The heaviest concentration of faculty is in economics, sociology, and public policy. Though scattered over multiple departments, the faculty and students are knit together through several mechanisms. For example, while the economics and sociology departments have many graduate students, there are less than 4,000 undergraduates at Chicago, and so the focus remains on graduate education. Thus, compared to many leading universities, this is a small, compact campus with considerable personal interaction across departments. The sociology and economics departments share adjacent floors in the same building. The Public Policy and the Population Center share the first and third floors in the same building. And many faculty share appointments across departments, e.g., Gary Becker (economics and sociology), Robert Fogel (business and economics), and David Meltzer (public policy and medicine). The departments at the core of the population center program are among the very best in this country, e.g., economics and sociology typically rank among the top two or three departments in their respective fields. The departments are quite selective in their admissions, and the group of students who make it beyond the first year and, thus, become eligible for NICHD trainee support is an even more select group. The population-related faculty in these departments are quite productive. In economics, sociology, and public policy, a full fourth of all dissertations produced in the last five years have been on population related topics -- where "population related" is defined as a topic that could easily appear in the annual program of the PAA (Population Association of America). More of these dissertations are on the way, with more than thirty Ph.D. students already having selected a dissertation committee before whom they have already successfully defended a research topic on a population-related topic. Administratively, the Committee on Demographic Training is under the Division of Social Sciences of the University of Chicago, with a Chair appointed by the Social Science Dean upon the recommendation of the Population Research Center (PRC) Executive Committee. The Committee is thus closely affiliated with the PRC of NORC and the University of Chicago. New faculty members of the CDT are selected by the Chair in consultation with the joint Executive Committee of the PRC. At its founding in 1985, the CDT was co-chaired by Robert T. Michael, then Professor of Education and now Distinguished Service Professor at the Harris School of Public Policy, and Evelyn M. Kitagawa, Professor Emeritus of Sociology. Subsequent chairs of the CDT were Douglas Massey, Sociology (1987-90); Robert Willis, Education and Public Policy (1990-92); Linda Waite, Sociology (1991-95); Robert Michael (1995-98); and Robert Townsend, Economics (1998-present). The Committee on Demographic Training is the primary vehicle for promoting instruction in demography at the University of Chicago. Its members select both pre-doctoral and postdoctoral fellows, establish all program requirements, coordinate the curricula across departments, administer training fellowships, supervise trainee research projects, and organize postdoctoral research training activities. The Population Research Center houses many research projects through which trainees find opportunities for practical research training and additional financial support. The PRC supports a standing seminar series called the Demography Workshop, which fosters interdisciplinary dialogue between both the faculty and the trainees. Several workshops in the Department of Economics-in Applications, Theory, Health Economics, and Empirical-provide other opportunities for dialogue. Other training support. Currently, training grants from the Hewlett Foundation, the NIA (National Institute of Aging), the NICHD (National Institute of Child Health & Human Development), and the Population Council support six pre-doctoral students and seven postdoctoral fellows. Health Studies trainees are supported by grants from the Agency for Health Care Policy Research and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Related Activities. The faculty of the Committee on Demographic Training participate in several other research centers affiliated with NORC and/or the University of Chicago. The centers provide faculty, staff, and pre-doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows with the opportunity to exchange ideas through meetings, workshops, publications, and training programs, and with additional research opportunities. The Center for Population Economics, directed by Robert W. Fogel, specializes in the development of life-cycle and intergenerational datasets used to study demographic, epidemiological, and economic processes; early indicators of work levels, disease, and death; life-cycle and intergenerational factors in the secular decline in mortality and in the improvements in the standard of living; changing patterns in geographic mobility; and changing patterns in the intergenerational transition of wealth. In collaboration with Northwestern University, the Poverty Center studies the causes of poverty in America and the effectiveness of policies to reduce poverty, focusing on innovations in welfare reform and poverty policy at the state level around the country with other research in changing labor markets; family functioning and the well-being of children; and teenage pregnancy. The Alfred P. Sloan Center on Parents, Children and Work focuses on how parents who work full-time manage the learning experiences and social development of their children. Funded in 1997, the Center is already highly productive: faculty and graduate students are analyzing data from existing databases while they also are preparing their own newly collected data.
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