Primary Research Areas and Working Groups

PRC researchers are especially renowned for their research in four over-lapping and reinforcing primary research areas, and their scientific contributions are many and path breaking. Many PRC researchers work in more than one of these overlapping and reinforcing areas, and in collaborative, interdisciplinary teams. These areas move well beyond the bounds of traditional demography and are on the cutting edge of population research. 

Our primary research areas are:

Family Demography and Intergenerational Relationships

The study of family and intergenerational factors critical to understanding population health; sociodemographic variation in formation and dissolution of family relationships, social changes contributing to these patterns (e.g., growing socioeconomic inequality); and the role of families in shaping and mitigating social and health inequalities.

Education, Work, and Inequality

The crucial role of education in shaping health and in both producing and reducing population inequalities; and school and work institutional processes that lead to gender and racial/ethnic differences in socioeconomic outcomes central to health disparities over the life course.

Population Health

The study of biopsychosocial approaches to health disparities research and the ways in which social and demographic contexts structure health disparities across the life course; economic development and population health; health care and population health dynamics.

Reproductive Health

The study of socioeconomic and racial/ethnic disparities in access to reproductive and family planning services; the impact of access to reproductive and family planning services on fertility and birth outcomes; legal and health care policy effects on access to reproductive and family planning services.

Some important research being conducted at the PRC, though not fitting into one of the four thematic areas, can be found in the Other Research section.