The Population Studies and Training Center (PSTC) at Brown University, formally established in 1965, is an internationally respected demography research and training center offering an outstanding interdisciplinary graduate training program. Research interests include social demography, economic demography, anthropological demography, and population health.
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Economists Louis Putterman and David Weil have created a new data set explaining differences in the world’s current per capita gross domestic products (GDPs). They introduce a “World Migration Matrix” showing that inequality among countries can be largely explained by where the ancestors of each country’s people lived some 500 years ago.
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PSTC Associate Director and Associate Professor of Anthropology Daniel J. Smith is the recipient of the 2008 Margaret Mead Award for his book A Culture of Corruption: Everyday Deception and Popular Discontent (Princeton University Press, 2006), which examines how ordinary Nigerians cope with - and participate in - corruption in their society.
The Margaret Mead Award, which is given jointly by the American Anthropological Association and the Society for Applied Anthropology, is presented annually to a junior anthropologist whose research helps to make anthropological research meaningful and accessible to a wider audience.
Read more here.
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Economist and PSTC faculty associate Vernon Henderson has
received an R01 award from The Eunice Kennedy Shriver National
Institute of Child Health and Human Development for his project "Population and Economic Recovery in Coastal Aceh: Aid and Village Institutions."
This project, which will extend Henderson's prior work in post-tsunami Indonesia, seeks to identify the economic, social, and political processes that influence the extent and nature of recovery from large-scale losses of population and economic assets following a natural disaster. In particular, this research will consider how external aid and different forms of aid delivery influence local behaviors, networks and institutions, as well as long-term growth and inequality.
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PSTC faculty associate Craig Hadley is lead author of a new study
selected as the "Editor's Choice" in the current issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. This article examines food insecurity, stressful life events, and mental health in rural Ethiopia, and finds that food insecurity is associated with common mental disorders such as anxiety and depression. Additionally, the study finds that there are considerable and frequent stressful life events even in non-conflict areas of sub-Saharan Africa - stressors that may negatively impact mental health and well-being.Read the article here.
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Brown University Provost and PSTC faculty associate David Kertzer
is author of a new book, Amalia's Tale, which chronicles an Italian peasant woman's pioneering malpractice lawsuit against the Italian medical establishment. A recent review of the book in The New York Times said that the work "brims with compassion and insight."
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