J. M. Ian Salas, economics Ph.D. ’13, has received the 2014 Dorothy S. Thomas Award from the Population Association of America. The honor recognizes his research on consequences of funding disruptions on family planning programs in the Philippines – work he pursued and published as a doctoral student at UCI – as the outstanding graduate student paper on interrelationships among social, economic and demographic variables. His research found that birth rates responded significantly to swings in public contraceptive supply, and that subsidized contraception helped poor and low-educated women manage their fertility. Salas completed his Ph.D. in fall 2013 and is currently the David E. Bell Post Doctoral Research Fellow at the Harvard Center for Population & Development Studies. He received the Thomas award at the Population Association of America annual meeting in May.