Timothy B. Gage

Office: Arts & Sciences Building, Room 114
Ph: (518) 442-4704
E-mail: tbg97@albany.edu

Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, 1982

Interests: Human biology, demography, population genetics, quantitative methods
Areas: Oceania

Director, Statistics and Computing for the Center for Social and Demographic Analysis

Jointly appointed with the Department of Epidemiology.

Curriculum Vitae

Research Interests

I am interested in the evolution of life histories including the international, historic, pre-historic, and inter-ethnic variability of human demographic rates and the causes of this variability. I am currently pursuing research in several specific areas:

1. Statistical modeling of infant mortality using population based parametric mixtures of logistic regression,
2. Developing methods of demographic analysis applicable to endangered species, including the non-human primates, and
3. Prehistoric human demography.

The ongoing research into infant mortality is developing statistical models for fully implementing the “proximate determinants model” of infant mortality.  The models account for heterogeneity in the birth cohort using conventional parametric mixture models but extend the mixture model to include logistic probabilities of mortality on each mixture.  The results to date suggest that heterogeneity may play a role in the well known “pediatric paradox”--that is, the observation that at low birthweight African-American mortality is lower than European-American mortality despite higher African-American infant mortality overall. 

Select Publications Since 2000

2005
Are Modern Environments Really Bad for Us?: Revisiting the Demographic and Epidemiologic Transitions. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Suppl 41:96-117.

2004
Gage, T.B. M.J. Bauer, N. Heffner, and H. Stratton. The pediatric paradox: Heterogeneity in the birth cohort. Human Biology, 76(3):327-342.

Eshed, V, Gopher, A. Gage, T.B. Hershkovitz, I. Has the transition to agriculture reshaped the demographic structure of prehistoric populations? American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 124:315-329.

2003
Classification of births by birth weight and gestational age: An application of multivariate mixture models. Annals of Human Biology, 30(5):589-604.

The evolution of age and size at maturity. Human Biology, 75:521-537.

2002
Modeling birthweight and gestational age distributions: Additive  vs. multiplicative processes. American Journal of Human Biology, 14:1-7.

2001
The age-specific fecundity of mammalian populations: A test of three mathematical models. Zoo Biology., 20:487-499.

2000
Variability of gestational age distributions by sex and ethnicity: An analysis using mixture models. American Journal of Human Biology, 12(2):181-191.