PAA Affairs Blog

PAA Affairs header

Share Your Research Activities Negatively Affected by Shutdown

By PAA Web posted 10-07-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
As the federal government shutdown enters its second week, I want to assure you that the PAA Office of Government Affairs, along with the PAA/APC Committee on Government and Public Affairs (GPAC), is monitoring developments and engaging with coalition partners in Washington, DC, including the Consortium of Social Science Associations, to address the problems this latest funding lapse has caused. We know from firsthand experience how disruptive this shutdown already has been. PAA, for example, had to cancel its long-planned October 8 th Capitol Hill briefing on U.S. Birth Rate Trends. If you are experiencing any adverse impacts (i.e. funding delays, canceled ...

House Appropriations Committee Advances Key Spending Bills

By PAA Web posted 09-23-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
Rejects Administration’s Proposed Funding Cuts and Praises Population Research In September, with only weeks before the current fiscal year ends, the House Appropriations Committee passed two Fiscal Year 2026 spending bills that together fund most of the federal agencies that directly and indirectly support the population sciences. In some respects, the House versions of the Commerce, Justice, Science (CJS) and Labor, Health and Human Services and Education (LHHS) Appropriations bills are similar to versions approved by the Senate Appropriations Committee (see August 4 PAA blog ). Most importantly, both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees firmly ...

Meet Our Newly Elected Leadership

By PAA Web posted 09-02-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
Congratulations to the newly elected officers, board members, and committee members of PAA. We are grateful to all members who participated in the election by casting their votes, and we extend our appreciation to every candidate who put themselves forward in service to the association. All newly elected individuals will begin their terms on January 1, 2026, with the exception of the Nominations Committee, whose term begins immediately. In addition, the President-Elect and Vice President-Elect will serve as co-chairs of the PAA 2027 Annual Meeting. We look forward to the leadership and contributions of our newly elected colleagues as they ...

Add Survey Questions to RAND’s Youth and Parent Panels

By PAA Web posted 08-19-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
RAND invites you to submit survey questions to one or both of our new probability-based survey panels: the American Youth Panel and the American Parent Panel. The cost is $3,000 for each simple question, with a minimum of 2 questions. The American Youth Panel includes a nationally representative sample of youth between the ages of 12-21. The American Parent Panel includes the parents of 12-17 year-olds. W e will field the omnibus surveys in October 2025. You can pose questions to only parents, or to both teenagers and parents. Following data collection, you will receive a data file with 1,000 completed ...

Statement in Response to Call for a New Census

By PAA Web posted 08-12-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
On behalf of the organizations we represent, the Population Association of America (PAA) and Association of Population Centers (APC), we are responding to the President’s purported call for a new, mid-decade census that would, for the first time ever, exclude undocumented immigrants. Population scientists, including demographers, economists, sociologists, and epidemiologists, in the public, private, academic, and non-profit sectors rely on census data to inform their research, evaluation, and training activities. As a result, PAA and APC support an accurate, inclusive, and cost-effective decennial census. We recognize that the decennial census is ...

A Note From the New Editors of Demography

By PAA Web posted 08-07-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
Our term as the new coeditors of Demography , the flagship journal of the Population Association of America (PAA), began on July 1, 2025. We are honored by the trust the PAA has placed in us and are delighted that Demography will once again be hosted at Duke University—following in the footsteps of Ken Land, who served as editor from 2008 to 2010, and Phil Morgan, who coedited the journal with UNC’s Barbara Entwisle from 1999 to 2001. The transfer of the Demography editorial office from the University of Washington to Duke University was smooth. We are deeply grateful to Sara Curran and her outstanding editorial assistants, María Vignau Loría and Aryaa ...

John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science Call for Nominations

By PAA Web posted 07-23-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
The National Academy of Sciences is pleased to announce the Call for Nominations for the 2026 John J. Carty Award for the Advancement of Science . Neither nominators nor candidates need to be NAS members. The 2026 John J. Carty Award recognizes noteworthy and distinguished accomplishments in the social sciences (excluding economics). The award is presented with a medal and a $25,000 prize. All nominations must be submitted online by Monday, October 6, 2025 and include : Nomination letter describing the candidate's work and why he or she should be selected for the award. No more than three (3) pages. ...

Contact Congress About Proposed NIH, NSF Spending Levels

By PAA Web posted 06-24-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
The PAA Office of Government Affairs has issued an action alert in response to proposed funding cuts to NIH and NSF. Take action here. Background On May 30, the Trump Administration began releasing more, albeit incomplete, details regarding federal agencies’ budget requests for Fiscal Year 2026. Needless to say, the President’s request, especially for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF), is alarmingly low. The President’s request recommends NIH receive $27.5 billion, which is approximately an $18 billion cut or 41 percent below the agency’s FY 2025 funding level. The National Science Foundation (NSF) is ...

Fiscal Year 2026 Deliberations Begin: Raising the Stakes for NIH, NSF, and Federal Statistical Agencies

By PAA Web posted 06-18-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
On May 30, the Trump Administration began releasing more, albeit incomplete, details regarding federal agencies’ budget requests for Fiscal Year 2026. The details could not come a moment too soon given the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have been holding hearings for weeks, and the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Representative Tom Cole (R-OK-4), has announced a schedule for considering or “marking up” all 12 of the funding bills this summer. The bills that support most of the federal agencies essential to the population sciences (Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill and Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Appropriations ...

New Executive Director Announcement

By PAA Web posted 05-27-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
We are delighted to announce that effective July 14, the PAA Executive Director will be Tristanne Staudt. She is currently the Executive Director of the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR), where she has demonstrated strong leadership over the past four years. She is very excited to take over the leadership of PAA. Tristanne emerged as the top candidate through a lengthy vetting process by both the Search Committee and Sterling Martin Associates, a recruitment firm that helped the committee with the search process. Our Search Committee spent the spring reviewing resumes and conducting multiple rounds of interviews, culminating in in-person ...

Government Affairs Update: FY 2026 Budget Details Emerge, NSF and Federal Surveys are DOGE Targets

By PAA Web posted 05-27-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
The month of May brought more alarming news from Washington, D.C., impacting federal scientific and statistical research agencies. Below are excerpts from the most recent newsletter issued by the Consortium of Social Science Associations (COSSA) , of which PAA is a governing member, regarding some of the major issues we are following. Please be assured that PAA is working independently and in collaboration with its coalition partners both publicly and behind-the-scenes to address these developments. What can you do to help? Respond to PAA Action Alerts—Building upon the success of PAA’s 2025 Advocacy Day in April, we will continue to urge PAA members ...

Congratulations to our Annual Awards Recipients

By PAA Web posted 05-20-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
PAA has a series of awards that are presented annually to extraordinary scholars in the population research field who meet the award criteria, exemplify the highest standards of professional conduct, and are selected by a committee of their peers. You can now view the recording of the PAA 2025 Awards Ceremony on our YouTube channel here . Congratulations to our Annual Awards recipients: Dorothy S. Thomas Award - Ralph Lawton , Harvard University "Early Life Infectious Disease Exposure, the 'Hygiene Hypothesis,' and Lifespan: Evidence from Hookworm" Irene B. Taeuber Award - Robert A. Moffitt , Johns Hopkins University Robert J. Lapham ...

2025 PAA Advocacy Day: A Record-Breaking Successful Day on Capitol Hill

By PAA Web posted 04-22-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
On April 10, in conjunction with the Population Association of America (PAA) 2025 Annual Meeting in Washington, DC, PAA sponsored a large advocacy day in which over 100 scientists from 30 states participated in meetings with their congressional delegations. PAA sponsors a large advocacy day whenever its annual meeting is held in Washington, DC. The last two events, in 2016 and 2012, attracted over 80 individuals, making this year’s event truly record-breaking. Population scientists went to Capitol Hill to share examples of their federally funded research as well as to promote greater understanding of how data produced by federal statistical agencies are ...

Thank you for a valuable meeting

By PAA Web posted 04-21-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
It was wonderful to see so many of you in Washington earlier this month attending our Annual Meeting. Your dedication and active engagement is what makes the Annual Meeting such a valuable resource for our community. We regret that many of our colleagues in the federal government were unable to join us this year, which was a big loss to all of us. We wish them all the best in these uncertain times. We are also extremely sorry for the difficulties our international colleagues faced this year in traveling to the United States. We hope that travel becomes easier next year. We are deeply grateful to the many PAA members who served on our ...

Announcing the 2025 PAA Election Slate of Nominees

By PAA Web posted 04-04-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
The Nominations Committee is pleased to put forward the following slate for the 2025 PAA Election. The Nominations Committee includes Jenna Nobles, University of California, Berkeley, Bussarawan “Puk” Teerawichitchainan, National University of Singapore, and Jennifer Van Hook, Pennsylvania State University. As stated in Article IV of the PAA By-Laws , this slate of nominees is now communicated to the members of the Association. Additional nominations may be made within 60 days of the date of this publication or other notice by petition signed by at least 10 members and submitted to the Secretary-Treasurer. PAA members will receive a ballot in their e-mail ...

Mutual support in these challenging times

By PAA Web posted 03-20-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
It seems that every day brings new challenges and threats to our working environments and the research that we have dedicated ourselves to advancing. Now, more than ever, we need each other to provide mutual support and highlight the importance of and to advance population research. To that end, we have important work to do at the 2025 Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America in Washington, DC (April 10-13). This includes a record number of meetings with legislators during our Advocacy Day on the Hill, and a robust set of scientific sessions covering a wide range of topics of interest to our members. There are meaningful ways that you can ...

Announcing the Next Editors of Demography

By PAA Web posted 03-05-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
PAA is excited to announce the next co-Editors of Demography are Hedwig Lee, M. Giovanna Merli and Marcos A. Rangel at Duke University. The new team will take over leadership on July 1, 2025. In their own words: “We are honored by the trust that the PAA Board and Publications Committee have placed in us. The journal is in excellent shape, thanks to Sara Curran’s leadership, her stewardship in advancing open access publishing, and the wealth of knowledge she has shared with our team. Moving forward, our goals are to: (1) maintain the core topics of demography, (2) continue to highlight impactful research in social, economic, and health ...

Special message from PAA President Irma Elo

By PAA Web posted 02-27-2025
Be the first person to recommend this.
Please see this video message from PAA President Irma Elo on how PAA is responding to the uncertainty in our government. Ways you can help… Action Alerts Stayed tuned to your e-mail for alerts of when and how to contact your Congressional representative. See PAA Action Alerts Share Your Terminated/Suspended Federal Grants To be most effective in our responses, we need reliable, timely information, especially as it pertains to awards and projects impacted by the implementation of current Executive Orders. Use this form to share information about your terminated, suspended, or impacted federal awards. The information entered cannot ...

Committed to the Important Research and Training Population Scientists Conduct

By PAA Web posted 12-02-2024
Be the first person to recommend this.
The results of the 2024 presidential and congressional elections usher in a new era of uncertainty for not only our field, but also for the Federal scientific research and statistical agencies. We are committed to working with the new Administration and Congress to ensure they understand the critically important research and training population scientists conduct to not only advance the nation’s scientific enterprise, but also to improve the public’s health and wellbeing. Likewise, we will be communicating with you about the implications of changes that the new Administration and Congress may pursue. Your engagement and participation in the PAA ...

Executive Director Announcement

By PAA Web posted 11-25-2024
Be the first person to recommend this.
PAA’s Executive Director, Danielle Staudt, has informed us she will be leaving PAA for a new role in mid-January 2025. She has accepted the Executive Director role at TESOL International Association, the association for professionals engaged in English language teaching. Danielle joined PAA in 2014 and her visionary leadership has been instrumental in driving the association’s success. She led the implementation of PAA’s first-ever strategic plan, guided us through the COVID-19 pandemic, and orchestrated the addition of new programs and services for a variety of membership segments. Her innovative approach has paved the way for ...