The Demographic and Behavioral Sciences Branch (DBSB) funds studies of the determinants and consequences of international and internal migration, economic and social mobility, spatial demography, and interactions between human populations and the physical environment.
Immigration Studies
In the area of
socioeconomic and demographic studies of immigration to the United States, other interests include, but are not limited to, the following:
- How international migration affects population growth rates, age distributions, racial and ethnic composition, fertility, and other demographic rates in the United States and sending countries.
- How the health of immigrants and U.S. natives differ. How and why the health of immigrants changes over time in the United States and across immigrant generations. How immigrant health is affected by migrant selectivity.
- Economic consequences of immigration, including effects on wages, employment, migration of workers, remittances, and fiscal impacts.
- How immigrant assimilation and long- and short-term outcomes differ by country of origin, gender, legal status, and visa status when entering the United States.
- How federal, state, and local policies affect socioeconomic and demographic outcomes for children in immigrant families.
- The role of social networks in the selection of immigrants and in immigrants’ adaptation in the United States.
- How immigrants affect and are affected by the communities they settle in. Immigrants’ initial settlement and subsequent internal migration patterns.
- How outcomes for children from immigrant families differ from outcomes for other children. How family characteristics and processes affect these differences. How outcomes for children change across immigrant generations.
To learn more about the NICHD’s interest in this area, visit the Children from Immigrant Families Web page.
Migration and Population Distribution Studies
In the area of
socioeconomic and demographic studies of migration and population distribution within the United States, interests include, but are not limited to the following:
- Improving theories of migration and improving methods for modeling migration, including the development of multi-level models; improving methods of collecting and analyzing migration data, and indirectly estimating migration streams;
- Migrant selectivity, including selectivity based on health;
- How the causes and consequences of non-mobility differ among socioeconomic and racial/ethnic groups;
- How migration affects residential and geographic segregation by race, ethnicity, gender, life stage, immigrant status, household/family type, socioeconomic status, and other salient characteristics;
- The affects of geographic segregation on outcomes for children, young adults, and families;
- How migration is affected by family factors and care-giving responsibilities, including family members in different households;
- How geographic mobility affects and is affected by demographic processes and changes in life the life cycle—such as fertility, mortality, formation and dissolution of marriages and marriage-like relationships, experiencing an “empty nest;”
- The effects of geographic mobility on the health and well-being of children;
- Interrelations between geographic mobility and infectious disease transmission, including transmission of HIV;
- Migration’s effects on sending and receiving communities;
- The effects of federal, state, and local policy, and national and sub-national economic conditions on geographic mobility; and
- How migration is affected by demographic and socioeconomic changes at the population level, such as later age at marriage, increasing female labor force participation, and changing economic opportunities.
Population Interaction Studies
In the area of research on
interactions between human populations and the physical environment, specific interests include, but are not limited to, the following:
- The effects of population change on the environment;
- The effects of environmental change on factors such as fertility, mortality, migration, and population distribution; and
- Reciprocal influences of population and environmental change.
Contact: Rebecca Clark
=
