Blogs

Submit a Proposal for New Virtual Workshop Series

By PAA Web posted 13 days ago
New in 2026! PAA is excited to introduce a new virtual workshop series to be held in early fall 2026. We invite submissions from individuals or groups to conduct three-hour workshops to help support the year-round education of PAA members and the larger demography field. Workshop topics could include (but not limited to): statistical methods, data set usage, data visualization, research communication, and professional development. Workshop proposals that include a variety of instructional approaches and materials are strongly encouraged. Submit a Proposal PAA will handle all the logistical arrangements, including Zoom platform and event ...

Changing Fertility Preferences and Understanding Recent Fertility Decline

By PAA Web posted 14 days ago
Call for papers “Changing Fertility Preferences and Understanding Recent Fertility Decline” Office of Population Research, Princeton University (November 13–14, 2026) We are pleased to invite submissions for a small interdisciplinary workshop on Changing Fertility Preferences and Understanding Recent Fertility Decline , to be held at the Office of Population Research, Princeton University, on November 13–14, 2026 . The workshop is organized by Alícia Adserà and Jim Raymo and supported by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies (PIIRS) and OPR. This interdisciplinary workshop will focus on new approaches to understanding fertility ...

Highlights from the Plenary Session - NIH and the Future of Population Research

By PAA Web posted 27 days ago
Thank you to Sinem Esengen, PhD Candidate at the Ohio State University for this recap. (Find Sinem on PAA Engage , X or Bluesky ) During the plenary session, “NIH and the Future of Population Research: A Conversation with the NIH Director,” Jay Bhattacharya addressed questions gathered from Population Association of America members about the future direction of NIH research funding—especially in light of the past year’s discussions surrounding grant cancellations, reinstatements, and media attention on flagged keywords. Dr. Will Dow from the University of California- Berkeley moderated the conversation and guided questions submitted by PAA members. ...

Update on Proposed OMB Uniform Guidance Revisions

By PAA Web posted 06-18-2026
On May 29, the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) issued a lengthy, complex proposed rule, Regulation for Federal Financial Assistance , that would make major changes to the Uniform Guidance governing federal financial assistance, including research grants and cooperative agreements. The rule would codify several Executive Orders that the Administration has issued over the last year. The rule’s proposed changes that are likely to have wide-ranging impacts for PAA members include: Requiring that every new grant program explicitly aligns with the Administration’s policies and priorities, as opposed to scientific need, statutory mandate, or ...

Statement on Commerce’s Disclosure Avoidance for Statistical Products

By PAA Web posted 06-17-2026
APC, APDU, COPAFS, ICPSR, and PAA Statement on Commerce’s Disclosure Avoidance for Statistical Products On June 4, 2026 the Department of Commerce issued a new order “Disclosure Avoidance for Statistical Products” (DAO 216-26) that limits the types of privacy protection methods that the Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) can use for their data products. This order subverts processes developed over decades to foster transparency and public trust and creates a scenario in which there will either be less privacy for our personal information, or less usable data, or both. This order raises several concerns: Lack of Transparency ...

Special Issue of The Milbank Quarterly on How Policy Contexts Impact Population Health in the United States

By PAA Web posted 06-16-2026
In partnership with the Center for Aging and Policy Studies and Center for Policy Research at Syracuse University, The Milbank Quarterly will publish a special issue to advance knowledge on the connections between policies and population health in a changing U.S. context. The special issue seeks empirical, methodological, and theoretical contributions on the topic. Of particular interest are papers that link changes and variation in policy contexts to health outcomes, identify mechanisms linking policies to outcomes, or propose new ways to measure and conceptualize policy contexts for health research. See the attached call for papers for more information ...

Applications for NIH OBSSR Postdoctoral Fellowships

By PAA Web posted 06-16-2026
Are you a doctoral-level researcher passionate about the intersection of behavioral science, data, and public health? The NIH Office of Behavioral and Social Sciences (OBSSR) is now accepting applications for two Oak Ridge Institute for Sciences and Education (ORISE) postdoctoral fellowships for researchers interested in advancing the role of behavioral and social sciences in federal health research. The first of the two fellowships—titled NIH OBSSR Fellowship for Using Behavioral and Social Sciences Research to Inform AI Practices in Health Research Policy and Administration —focuses on the intersection of behavioral science and artificial ...

Mathematical Demography: Theory and Modeling

By PAA Web posted 06-16-2026
Mathematical Demography: Theory and Modeling , a recently released textbook by Arni S. R. Srinivasa Rao, is a comprehensive and rigorous treatment of population dynamics that bridges classical demography with modern mathematical and stochastic modeling and theory. This textbook is suitable for a one-semester course. It develops demographic models from first principles, integrating tools from differential equations and stochastic processes to provide a unified and deeply analytical framework. Covering such topics as Euler–Lotka equations, two-population Lotka-Volterra models, three-population SIR models with their stability properties, life tables, PDE-based ...

House Appropriations Committee Advances Fiscal Year 2027 Bill Funding NIH and Praises Population Research

By PAA Web posted 06-16-2026
On June 9, the House Appropriations Committee approved its version of the Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education (LHHS) bill in a party-line vote, 34 to 28. The bill covers funding for federal science and statistical agencies important to the population sciences, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), and National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Overall, the bill rejected numerous funding cuts and policy proposals that were included in the Administration’s FY 2027 budget. PAA is very grateful that the Committee rejected the Administration’s ...

PAA Joins Efforts to Save NSF SBE Directorate: You Can Help!

By PAA Web posted 06-02-2026
It has been a particularly challenging few months for the National Science Foundation (NSF), between a massive, proposed budget cut in the Administration’s Fiscal Year (FY) 2027 budget, the President’s dismissal of the entire National Science Board (NSB), and an effort to eliminate the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences Directorate (SBE). The Population Association of America (PAA) is working side-by-side with its colleagues in the scientific research community, urging Congress to defend NSF. Below is an update on the latest actions and how you can help. Saving the SBE Directorate PAA is working with its partners, especially with the Consortium ...

Demographic Analysis with Applications to Aging, Health, and Education

By PAA Web posted 05-19-2026
The College of Population Studies, Chulalongkorn University, will organize the training workshop “Demographic Analysis with Applications to Aging, Health, and Education” in Bangkok, Thailand, from 2–25 November 2026 . The workshop provides intensive hands-on training in demographic methods and computer-based analysis, with applications to aging, health, education, population projections, R programming, Excel/VBA, and generative AI for demographic analysis. It is suitable for junior scientists, graduate students, and early- to mid-career professionals working with demographic or statistical data. The application deadline is 22 June 2026 ...

Demography Meets Subscription Funding Goal—Open Access for 2026

By PAA Web posted 05-04-2026
Demography , a Subscribe to Open journal published by Duke University Press, met its subscription funding target by the March 31, 2026, deadline, and so all articles published in the 2026 calendar year will be Open Access in perpetuity. DUP, which relies on institutional subscriptions to support its publishing costs ( summary PDF ), successfully promoted and sold enough subscriptions to flip the journal to OA for the entire year. (When the goal is not met, the year’s content will be available only to subscribing institutions and their affiliated researchers and readers, as well as all PAA members.) You can see the current list of ...

2026 PAA Officers Election Slate of Nominees

By PAA Web posted 05-01-2026
The Nominations Committee is pleased to put forward the following slate for the 2026 PAA Election. The Nominations Committee includes Jennifer Glick, Pennsylvania State University, Alison Gemmill, University of California, Los Angeles, and Kevin Thomas, Rice 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 inbox this summer. President (2 ...

International Conference on Social Computing (ICSC 2026)

By PAA Web posted 04-30-2026
International Conference on Social Computing (ICSC 2026) September 2-4, Nuffield College, University of Oxford We are delighted to announce the Call for Papers for the International Conference on Social Computing (ICSC 2026) , which welcomes submissions and participation for the in-person conference at Nuffield College, University of Oxford on September 2nd-4th, 2026. Core conference areas include (but are in no way limited to): Digital and Computational Demography Social applications of Large Language Models Large-scale social media analytics and intelligence Digital inclusion in the Global South The ...

Statement on Threats to National Science Foundation SBE Directorate

By PAA Web posted 04-30-2026
The Population Association of America (PAA) and Association of Population Centers (APC) share the scientific research community’s concerns regarding recent actions taken by the Administration threatening the integrity of the National Science Foundation (NSF) overall and the NSF Social, Behavioral, and Economic (SBE) Directorate in particular. PAA and APC are especially alarmed by a proposal in the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2027 budget that seeks to eliminate the NSF SBE Directorate. Our organizations’ concerns are heightened by reports that NSF is taking steps to shut down the SBE Directorate this year without consulting Congress or stakeholders regarding ...

Attending PAA 2026? Stop by Booth #402 To Add a Question on a National Survey

By PAA Web posted 04-28-2026
Attending the 2026 PAA Conference? Be sure to visit Verasight at Booth #402, where conference attendees can take advantage of a complimentary opportunity to field one survey question in Verasight’s next nationally representative omnibus survey. Every participating attendee will have their question included in a survey of 1,000 Americans, will receive: Raw survey data Survey weights Codebook Detailed methodology report Dynamic HTML report with toplines and crosstabs Whether you're exploring a new hypothesis, pressure-testing an idea, or looking for fast-turn public opinion insights, this is a rare chance to ...

Call for Abstracts for International Conference on Aging in the Americas

By PAA Web posted 04-20-2026
The 2026 International Conference on Aging in the Americas (ICAA) will be held September 23–25, 2026, in Chicago, Illinois . The conference theme is Aging and Health in the Americas. Abstract submissions are invited from emerging and early-career scholars in the social sciences with a focus on Latino Health and Aging. Abstracts are due May 31, 2026. All emerging scholars will also have the opportunity to participate in a mentored publication program. Please circulate this opportunity within your networks and to any eligible scholars who may be interested. Please send questions to: a.reyes@cornell.edu . Submit here: https://forms.gle/oLd2RovyFZkts42G6 ...

Collection of Papers Reporting SCORE Outcomes

By PAA Web posted 04-14-2026
The Systematizing Confidence in Open Research and Evidence (SCORE) program was a large-scale, multi-method initiative funded by DARPA that involved 865 researchers to assess the credibility of findings in the social and behavioral sciences. By sampling 3,900 papers published between 2009 and 2018, the project evaluated research across three distinct dimensions: reproducibility (same data/analysis), robustness (same data/different analysis), and replicability (new data/same analysis). The results, published three papers in Nature and six preprints, revealed that while human experts are reasonably accurate at forecasting replication success, only about half ...

White House Releases Initial Details of Fiscal Year 2027 Budget Proposal

By PAA Web posted 04-13-2026
On April 3, the White House released the initial details of its Fiscal Year 2027 budget proposal . The document represents the President’s spending and policy priorities and serves as a starting position for the Administration’s negotiations with Congress. Congress never accepts the President’s budget in its entirety. Instead, Congress uses the proposal to inform its deliberations as it drafts the 12 appropriations bills that fund all federal agencies. The budget is released in several parts, including tables and narratives, or congressional justifications (CJs), which provide additional details about the Administration’s request. As of the second week of ...

50 Meetings in One Impactful Day!

By PAA Web posted 03-17-2026
PAA Members Storm Capitol Hill—50 Meetings in One Impactful Day! On March 11, 2026, a small, dedicated delegation of the Population Association of America (PAA) from 10 states descended on Capitol Hill, meeting with members of Congress and congressional staff in 50 offices! The 2026 PAA Capitol Hill Day was an opportunity for PAA officers and other invited participants to meet with key members of Congress and congressional staff to inform them about federally funded population research activities and advances and discuss how federal scientific and statistical agencies directly and indirectly support the population sciences. Participants thanked ...