Kansas Population Center to host virtual seminar series

LAWRENCE — The Kansas Population Center at the University of Kansas announced that it will host a virtual seminar series, Life, Death, and Everything in the Middle. The series will showcase information on demography specific to the Midwest, a region with its own unique population trends.

“We are excited to bring this vibrant, innovative virtual seminar to the KU community. The Kansas Population Center focuses on encouraging and advancing cutting-edge population research on critical human experiences like life, death, health and well-being in the middle of the country,” said KPC co-director Misty Heggeness, research scientist at the Institute for Policy & Social Research and associate professor of public affairs & administration.

The first event in the series, scheduled for 1 p.m. Oct. 16, will feature J. David Brown, principal economist at the U.S. Census Bureau. Brown will present work compiling a purely administrative record census on April 1, 2020, and comparing it to the 2020 census. His research uses sources like Social Security Administration records to arrive at their count of the U.S. population.

Attendees can register to attend this free virtual seminar.

The seminar series will meet most Mondays from 1-2 p.m. Upcoming sessions:

• On Dec. 4, Nancy Folbre, professor emerita of economics and director of the Program on Gender and Care Work, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, will present “Parental Expenditures of Time and Money on Children in the U.S.” Register to attend.
• Spring 2024 presentations will include:
  • Martha Bailey, professor of economics, University of California, Los Angeles, and California Center for Population Research, NBER research associate
  • Chloe East, associate professor of economics, University of Colorado Denver
  • Anusha Nash, senior economist, Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

The Kansas Population Center is a newly established institutional member of the Association of Population Centers center at KU. The focus of the center is on population dynamics in Kansas and the broader Midwest, exploring both individual and community patterns from cradle to grave. KPC is especially interested in population trends related to aging, gender, economic development, and health and well-being, with a focus on rural communities. KPC members use big data to understand how systems and organizations both help and hinder the health and economic well-being of rural (and rural adjacent) communities in the Midwest. KPC aims to foster and support widely defined population research for local and regional public policy decision-makers and to provide training opportunities for students.