Research
Themes of CSDA
CSDA
affiliates' research revolves around four signature themes: Population
Composition and Redistribution; Family and Household Dynamics; Status
of Children and Adolescents; and Health, Morbidity, and Mortality.
On all of these topics we both collect primary data and engage in the
creative use of existing sources.
Perhaps
the best-known dimension of our collective research program concerns
population composition and redistribution. Work in this area
falls into several intersecting foci, including racial and ethnic residential
patterns, the determinants and consequences of residential mobility
and internal migration, immigrant adaptation and incorporation, and
urbanization in contemporary China. Our broad scientific objectives
in this area are to gain a better comprehension of the causes and implications
of the disparate geographic locations of racial and ethnic groups, to
understand how immigrants become incorporated into and adapt-or fail
to adapt-to host societies, and to explore the many aspects of changing
population distribution patterns in China.
These
studies naturally intersect with other themes. Albany researchers tackle
myriad important issues related to changing family and household
dynamics, both in the United States and abroad. Certainly, in the
U.S. the postwar period has witnessed dramatic changes in patterns of
marriage, divorce, and fertility-especially nonmarital fertility. The
changing landscape of America's families and households has important
implications for the status and well-being of children and adolescents.
Our overriding objective in this area is to better understand how families,
peers, neighborhoods, and schools contribute to the successful development
of America's youth. Albany researchers also engage a variety of issues
related to population health, morbidity, and mortality. These
studies fall into two categories: documenting and identifying sources
of variation in population health, and exploring the social, psychological,
and cultural determinants of morbidity and mortality. Emphasis is given
to vulnerable populations at both ends of the age distribution.
A defining
characteristic of population research at the University at Albany is
the extent to which specific research programs cut across these signature
themes, often involving collaborations among two or more scholars, and
increasingly cutting across disciplinary boundaries. More information
about research in each area is provided below under the rubrics of Spatial
Inequalities and Vulnerable Populations.
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Spatial Inequalities
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Demography of Vulnerable Populations