Over May 4 and 5, more than 70 University of California scholars took part in the All-UC Demography Conference. Hosted by UCI’s Center for Population, Inequality, and Policy and sponsored by UCI’s Office of Research, the two-day event featured an impressive lineup of faculty paper presentations and discussions, an enlightening keynote address, and a competitive graduate student poster contest.

“The goal of our conference was two-fold - to highlight the creation and success of UCI's Center for Population, Inequality, and Policy, and to spotlight the outstanding faculty and graduate student research at population centers at UCI and other UC campuses,” says David Neumark, UCI economics Distinguished Professor and CPIP co-director. “We had a large number of terrific research papers spanning population sciences, and generated strong interest in turning this into an annual event that circulates among UC population centers.”

Interdisciplinary faculty presented 13 papers, delving into diverse topics ranging from COVID-19’s toll on incarcerated individuals and ageism in the workplace to immigration enforcement and access to healthcare.

Ronald Lee, demography Distinguished Professor and founding director of the Center for the Economics and Demography of Aging at UC Berkeley, delivered the keynote address, highlighting what needs to be done to adjust and prepare policies, institutions, and behaviors to accommodate an increasingly aging population.

In addition to faculty paper session and the keynote address, the conference featured a highly competitive graduate student poster competition. Twenty students from five UCs showcased their research findings, demonstrating the breadth and depth of demographic research talent within the UC system. Top prizes included:

• First place: Payal Hathi, Demography and Sociology, UC Berkeley
  “Quantifying pregnancy and pregnancy loss in the demographic study of population health”
• Second place: Heidi West, Public Health, UCLA
  “Migration, gender, and families: The effects of spousal migration on women’s empowerment”
• Third place: Kathryn McMahon, Geography, UC Santa Barbara
  “Does humidity matter? Prenatal heat and child growth in South Asia”
• Honorable Mention: Abhery Das, Public Health, UC Irvine
  “The Mexican Drug War: Homicides and Deaths of Despair”

The conference – planned to be offered annually – served as both a research showcase and networking opportunity that fostered valuable connections among scholars and researchers across disciplines, setting the stage for future advancements in population health research.

The Center for Population, Inequality, and Policy at UCI advances research on socioeconomic factors that directly impact inequality. In addition to Neumark, CPIP is co-directed by Tim Allen Bruckner, public health professor, and Naomi Sugie, criminology, law and society associate professor. Learn more at https://www.cpip.uci.edu/index.php.