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Notable Papers
- “Vaccinating the oldest against COVID-19 saves both the most lives and most years of life” (with T. Cassidy and K. Wachter), PNAS, 2021. (An expanded version of the proof with more detail is also available.)
- “Demographic Perspectives on Mortality of Covid-19 and Other Epidemics” (with R. Lee), PNAS, 2020.
- “Improved measurement of racial/ethnic disparities in Covid-19 Mortality in the United States” (with S. Atherwood), MedRxiv, 2020.
- “From Patrick to John F.: Ethnic Names and Occupational Success in the Last Era of Mass Migration” (with G. Stecklov), American Sociological Review, 2016.
- “The end of ‘lowest-low’ fertility?” (with T. Sobotka and A. Jasilioniene), Population and Development Review, 2009.
- “Marriage delayed or marriage forgone? New cohort forecasts of first marriage for US Women” (with CT Kenney), American Sociological Review, 2001.
- “How 4.5 million Irish immigrants became 40 million Irish Americans: Demographic and subjective aspects of the ethnic composition of white Americans” (with M. Hout), American Sociological Review, 1994.
- More at Google Scholar
News
- New post-docs: Serge Atherwood (CenSoc), Leslie Root (CenSoc), Jordan Weiss (NIA), and Nathan Seltzer (NIA).
- CenSoc meetings twice a month. Contact Lawton_at_berkeley_dot_edu if you’d like to join.
- Dennis Feehan and I are Faculty Grad Advisors for 2020-21.
- I’m co-editing a special issue of the Vienna Yearbook of Population Research on “Demographic Aspects of the Covid 19 pandemic and its consequences”
- Social Security Technical Panel on Assumptions and Methods released. Includes recommendations about fertility forecasting.
- Slides from recent talks on CenSoc at FSU and on “Fertility in the Two Americas” at Bowling Green
- My GitHub page
I am a demographer, with broad interests in social and economic inequality and population dynamics. My research applies sociological, economic, and demographic theories to answer questions such as — Are there economic benefits of cultural assimilation for immigrants? How do we forecast the marriage and fertility of cohorts that are still in their 20s and early 30s? How can Big Data help us understand the causes of longevity differences by ethnic group, race, and social class?
I am the Chancellor’s Professor of Demography and Director of the Berkeley Population Center. I am Principle Investigator of the CenSoc Project on mortality disparities and a contributor to the DemogBlog.
Prior to coming to Berkeley, I was a Director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany, and, before that, Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. I received my MA in Demography and Social Sciences from the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris and my Ph.D. in Demography from Berkeley.