Research

Mortality Disparities

With support from NIH, I am principle investigator of the CenSoc Project, which produces public-use, large-scale administrative data sets by linking individual records in the historical census of 1940 and Social Security Administrative records of those who have died. These data are especially useful for studying mortality differentials at a high resolution. Applications include the study of immigrant groups, the causal effects of education, the study of racial and ethnic minorities, occupational differences, and the effects of wealth and housing value on longevity.

I’m hiring graduate student researchers and post-doctoral researchers for this project. We are producing public data sets and doing original research. Please contact me if you are interested. 

Here is a new working paper describing the Berkeley Unified Numident Mortality Database, with some examples of applications to immigrant mortality, small area estimates, and seasonality.

Research Using Names

My work in this area is interested not so much in naming per se, but rather in the creative use of names as a new qualitative characteristic in population-level data sets that can help us understand the importance of identity for individual success, discrimination, and social signalling.  Together with Guy Stecklov (a former Berkeley Demography classmate), I have studied the consequences of carrying a foreign-sounding name for the economic mobility of the children of immigrants . We have also carried used names in relation to fertility, trying to gain insight into the demographic transition and what we interpret as intentional fertility limitation as parents try to invest in child “quality,” reducing fertility in order to achieve this. Our most recent work uses the names in the CenSoc BUNMD data to examine — among African-American brothers — whether carrying a “blacker sounding” name produces disadvantages that can be detected at the level of longevity differences.

“From Patrick to John F.:  Ethnic Names and Occupational Success in the Last Era of Mass Migration,” Joshua R. Goldstein and Guy Stecklov, American Sociological Review, 2016, 81(1):85-106.

How Low Are Birth Rates?

The number of children people are actually having tends to be higher than estimates produced from annual birth rates. Much of my research has  focused on estimating understanding on cohort fertility rates and the effect of postponement on period fertility rates reported each year.

Another interest I have is in subjective aspects of fertility, particularly stated intentions about childbearing, how these can be assessed, and how attitudes may change over time.

Papers on the role that cultural diffusion plays in the fertility transition and on the persistence of the past include:

My most recent interested in fertility focuses on the consequences of shocks like the Great Recession and the current Covid-19 pandemic.

Here is a recent presentation on methods for studying mixtures of populations, such as early and late child bearers in the United States.

Mathematical Demography

Formal modelling is a tool for understanding how to interpret the numbers we find and for conceptualising the way in which which individual events aggregate up to population processes.

My most recent work in this area involves Covid-19 mortality

Mathematical models of cohort processes (with relationships to period measures) include

With Jim Vaupel, I am co-editor of the Demographic Research on-going special issue “Formal Relationships”. The inaugural publication in this series is

The complete series can be accessed here.

My work on forecasting and long-term population dynamics includes

Race and Ethnicity

My work in race and ethnicity has looked at how mixed-race and ethnic populations form and are identified. Some papers in this area include

Family Demography

Economic Demography

  • “How Large Are the Effects of Population Aging on Economic Inequality?” Joshua R. Goldstein and Ronald D. Lee, Vienna Yearbook of Population Research, 2015, (2014):193-209.
  • “Transfers in an aging European Union,” Fanny A. Kluge, Joshua R. Goldstein, and Tobias C. Vogt, The Journal of the Economics of Aging, 2019 13:45-54.
  • “The changing relationship between unemployment and total fertility,” Deniz D. Karaman Oersal and Joshua R. Goldstein, Population Studies, 2018, 72(1):109-121.
  • “Demographic Pressures on European Unity,” Joshua R. Goldstein and Fanny Kluge, Population and Development Review, 2016, 42 (2): 299-304.