2025 Irene B. Taeuber Award Recipient

Congratulations Robert A. Moffitt

Congratulations to Dr. Robert A. Moffitt, Johns Hopkins University, as the 2025 recipient of the Irene B. Taeuber Award. The Taeuber award is presented in recognition of an unusually original or important contribution to the scientific study of population or for an accumulated record of exceptionally sound and innovative research. 

Dr. Robert A. Moffitt received the 2025 Irene B. Taeuber Award for having accumulated an incredible and innovative record of research. He is a renowned economist, past president of PAA, and has served on many boards and committees throughout the population field. His work has made a substantial contribution toward understanding the consequences of social insurance programs for the wellbeing of the poor and disadvantaged, and he was a key contributor to recent NAS roadmap to reducing child poverty.

Dr. Robert Moffitt's Statement

    I am immensely honored to be given the Irene Taeuber Award by the PAA this year.  I took the opportunity of this Award to refresh my memory of Irene Taeuber.  Taeuber wrote a number of important articles and books from about 1945 to 1965 and should be considered one of the founders of modern demography.  And being a woman and a demographer back then was very difficult because of discrimination against women, but she was able to get a good (but non-faculty) position at OPR, where she was able to carry out her work.  The book I deliberately carried under my arm to the dais (see the video) was her magnum opus, “The Population of Japan,” published in 1958.  I checked it out of my university library. It is an incredible book, covering historical trends in fertility, marriage, internal migration, mortality, etc. in Japan.  But she started in 650 A.D. because she argued that you have to understand the culture in Japan to understand its demographic history, so the first 100 pages were just about how the modern Japanese culture had its roots almost 1500 years ago.  It is a work of monumental erudition.  It also made me a little sad that hardly anyone writes books anymore; we only write articles.  You can’t accomplish what she accomplished except with a book.     

Watch the presentation