Population and the Environment: Analytical Demography and Applied Population Ethics/MaryShenk
Notes by user Mary Shenk (Pennsylvania State Univ.) for Population and the Environment: Analytical Demography and Applied Population Ethics
Post-meeting Reflection
1+ paragraphs on any combination of the following:
- Presentation highlights
- Open questions that came up
- How your perspective changed
- Impact on your own work
- e.g. the discussion on [A] that we are having reminds me of [B] conference/[C] initiative/[D] funding call-for-proposal/[E] research group
This has been a very productive meeting for me. At first I thought "I don't do environmental work, so what do I have to contribute to this course?" But I was interested in the topic so I decided to participate, and it turns out that there are many interesting intersections between my work and that of other participants who are more directly focused on the environment. I have also found an environmental perspective embedded in my own work that I have been able to make more explicit as part of my presentation for this workshop. In terms of professional outcomes, I have already developed one new potential collaboration relevant to human population and demographic transitions in the past and an idea for a future workshop.
Reference material notes
Some examples:
- Here is [A] database on [B] that I pull data from to do [C] analysis that might be of interest to this group (insert link).
- Here is a free tool for calculating [ABC] (insert link)
- This painting/sculpture/forms of artwork is emblematic to our discussion on [X]!
- Schwartz et al. 2017 offers a review on [ABC] migration as relate to climatic factors (add the reference as well).
Colleran & Mace 2015 gives an excellent example from rural Poland which examines the relative effect of individual and group level variables on fertility outcomes.
Gurven & Kaplan 2007 discuss longevity among hunter-gatherers, giving us a framework for understanding what human demography may have looked like in our evolutionary past.
Kohler, Behrman & Watkins 2001 shows the effects of different social network structure on contraceptive knowledge and contraceptive use, showing how some may promote social learning while some inhibit it.
Lam 2011 gives important context for concerns about overpopulation in the past, and how many of these concerns were not realized though some were.
Nolin & Ziker 2016 examines a very rapid fertility decline--more of a fertility crash--in Siberia following the collapse of the Soviet Union, emphasizing how abrupt change or high levels of uncertainty may in some cases predict to low fertility. This is also a very elegant statistical model.
Page et al. 2016 gives an empirical test in the modern world of the mechanism by which the Neolithic Demographic Transition may have occurred thousands of years ago.
Shenk et al. 2013 gives a brief review of different causal models of the demographic transition and a comparison among them using model selection methods on detailed data.
Shenk, Kaplan & Hooper 2016 models the effects of status competition and inequality on fertility decisions. Results suggest that the dynamics of social competition may increase the scope of fertility decline compared to economic motivations alone.
Reference Materials
Presenter on the following Agenda items
Household decisions and their consequences - fundamentals of the demographic transition
- Presentation file
- Download Presentation (Delete)
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