9th Annual Berkeley Workshop in Formal Demography 2023
June 5 - 9
This hands-on, week-long program is funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (R25HD083136) and co-sponsored by the Berkeley Population Center and the Center on Economics and Demography of Aging. The focus this year is on fertility, including contemporary topics like Covid-19 and abortion policy.
Agenda
Link to the dynamic agenda for the week
Curriculum
We will use the fundamental tools of formal demography such as stable population theory and the mathematics of fertility, reproduction, and other demographic outcomes, to understand fertility dynamics and the implications of recent events like the Covid-19 pandemic and the Dobbs decision.
Workshop Materials
For instruction we will use R and RStudio running on Jupyterhub. All workshop R materials are available and executable by clicking on the blue Datahub icon below. Log-in information for workshop participants will be received via email. If you did not receive this information or need assistance logging in please contact trouble@demog.berkeley.edu.
If you are new to R or would like a refresher, we recommend these resources to help brush up on the basics:
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A (very) short introduction to R: A fairly complete, and not that short, overview of the R language. Note that Rstudio has changed a lot recently so don’t pay too much attention to their description of R studio. But otherwise a very good overview, especially for those with a bit of programming experience. Even beginners may find this useful to skim, particularly after having tried the first few labs.
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Google Intro to R video series: For those who prefer videos, this is a great series. Just note that they do not use Rstudio, so you’ll need to modify a few of the commands.
Discussion
For workshop discussion about formal demography topics and the exercises we will use a dedicated Slack channel. If you are registered for the workshop and cannot access the channel please contact trouble@demog.berkeley.edu.
Schedule
| Date | Topic | Slides |
|---|---|---|
| Monday 6/5 | Matrix population models and stable population theory, including growth and reproduction | |
| Tuesday 6/6 | Mortality modeling, focusing on the continuous representation of the lifetable with hazards | |
| Wednesday 6/7 | Applications and extensions of the formal models in Days 1 and 2, applying them to the tempo and quantum of fertility and the recovery of fertility and marriage after temporary shocks. | Dynamic Models of Fertility Change (Cassidy & Goldstein, 2023) |
| Thursday 6/8 | Guest speakers presenting new research in formal demography with a special emphasis on fertility research | - Intentional Fertility (Lee, 2023).[pptx] - Conditional Parity-Specific Fertility Rates for the U.S (Root et al, 2023) |
| Friday 6/9 | Guest speakers presenting new research in formal demography with a special emphasis on fertility research | - Formal Demography of Peak Population (Goldstein & Cassidy, 2023) - Formal Demography in the 21st Century (Wachter, 2023) |