Seminar Series

The 1994 discovery of arsenic in ground water in Bangladesh prompted a massive public health effort to test all tubewells in the country and convince nearly one-quarter of the population to switch to arsenic-free drinking water sources. According to numerous sources, the campaign was effective in leading the majority of households at risk of arsenic poisoning to abandon backyard wells in favor of more remote tubewells or surface water sources, a switch widely believed to have saved numerous lives.

We have reserved the last DuPRI slot on Thursday, April 26 for a practice session for students presenting at PAA this year during the regular DuPRI time slot. We hope there will be a critical mass of faculty in addition to other students to provide feedback on the presentation. For all three students, this will be the first PAA presentation.

In a very real way, the rise of undocumented migration and the growth of America's undocumented population are a product of poorly conceived immigration and border policies, which in the course of a few decades transformed Mexico-U.S. migration from a stable, circular flow of male Mexican workers going to three states into a much larger settled population of Mexican families living in 50 states.

Little is known about the health effects of the economic downturn, with foreclosure one of its most visible signs. Research in economics suggests that the impact of an economic downturn is first felt through emotional well-being. Hence we explore onset of depression over the interval of the economic downturn with a unique data source, the National Social Life Health and Aging Project (NSHAP). Fortuitously NSHAP wave 1 was collected in 2005-2006 and wave 2 in 2010-2011, bounding the economic downturn and foreclosure crisis.

A growing number of persons living beyond age 85 underscore the need for accurate measurement and modeling of mortality at advanced ages. This is also very important issue for making correct forecasts of population aging and related demands for medical services and social support. Earlier studies indicate that exponential growth of mortality with age (Gompertz law) is followed by a period of mortality deceleration with slower rate of growth. This study challenges earlier conclusions with new data and estimates. In this study we used U.S.

Based on subjective survival probability questions in the Health and Retirement Study, we use an econometric model to estimate the determinants of individual-level uncertainty about personal longevity. This model is built around the Modal Response Hypothesis (MRH), a mathematical expression of the idea that survey responses of 0, 50 or 100 percent to probability questions indicate a high level of uncertainty about the relevant probability. We show that subjective survival expectations in 2002 line up very well with realized mortality of the HRS respondents between 2002 and 2010.

Rapid advances in technology and scientific methods stimulated by the sequencing of the human genome have yielded discoveries that begin to uncover the genetic roots of common chronic health conditions. The implications of these discoveries for population health science remain unclear. Three questions central to translating genetic discoveries to population health research are (1) What are the magnitudes of risks that can be predicted using genetic information? (2) Do genetics provide new information over and above family history?

This paper describes how using a gene-environment interaction framework may allow us to understand why health policies often work on some people but not others. A motivating example focuses on tobacco taxation policies in the US. The reduction in tobacco use as a result of taxation has been considered one of the most important public health successes in the past century. However, individuals continue to smoke at high rates and there is evidence of substantial heterogeneity in the responses to taxation.

This paper provides a systematic analysis of identification in linear social networks models. This is both a theoretical and an econometric exercise in that it links identification analysis to a rigorously delineated model of interdependent decisions. We develop a Bayes-Nash equilibrium analysis for interdependent decisions under incomplete information in networks that produces linear strategy profiles of the type conventionally used in empirical work and which nests linear social interactions models as a special case.

The deleterious effects of poverty vis-à-vis mental and physical health are routinely argued to operate, at least in part, via dysregulation of the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis; although empirical examinations connecting poverty with HPA axis functioning are rare. The timing of poverty represents a particularly neglected aspect of this relationship. This study utilizes prospective data from the Study of Early Child Care and Youth Development (SECCYD) to test how the timing of and cumulative exposure to poverty are associated with awakening cortisol (N=826).