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Department of Demography

Fall 2011 Courses

The following courses will be offered in fall 2011. This schedule will be updated if any other courses are added to the schedule. Refer to the campus schedule of classes for last minute time and location updates and to verify number of spaces remaining in the class.


Demography 5 New course! Fundamentals of Population Science. This course provides an accessible introduction to the social science of demography. The course is organized around cases in which population issues raise policy or ethical dilemmas (example: China’s One Child policy). Through these cases, students will learn how demographers use models and data to acquire knowledge about population. Throughout the course, students will also learn to “read”, interpret, evaluate, and produce tabular and graphical representations of population data.  Jennifer Johnson-Hanks, Tuesdays and Thursdays 9:30-11am, Room 100 at 2232 Piedmont Avenue.
Demography 110
current description and syllabus
3 units		 Demographic Methods: Introduction to Population Analysis is an introductory course in demographic methods, teaching how demographers measure population growth, mortality, fertility, marriage, and age structure. It provides an opportunity to develop quantitative skills in the context of human life course processes. There are weekly exercises. Robert Chung, Tuesday-Thursday 9:30-11:00, 220 Wheeler.
Demography/ Sociology C126
4 units 		Social Consequences of Population Dynamics: An introduction to the causes and consequences of population change from a social and historical perspective. Topics include: the demographic transition, resource scarcity, economic development, the environment, population control, family planning, birth control, aging, intergenerational transfers, and international migration. In addition to 3 hours of lecture, one hour of section per week is required. John Wilmoth, Tuesday-Thursday 2:00-3:30 pm, 130 Wheeler.
Demography 210
current description and syllabus
4 units 		Demographic Methods: Rates and Structures is an advanced course in basic demographic methods. It presents training in life tables, including multiple-decrement life tables, hazard models including Cox proportional hazards, frailty, and unobserved heterogeneity, population projection with Leslie Matrices, the concept of a synthetic cohort, and the fundamentals of stable population theory. Demography 210 involves use of computer workstations (with the R statistical language), some reliance on basic calculus, and an extended project in demographic projection. Robert Chung, Wednesdays 3-6, 31 Evans.
Demography 213
2 units S/U		 Computer Applications for Demographic Analysis: Introduction to Computing for Demographers: Introduction to R and SAS for demographic statistics. Basic Unix tricks and idiosyncrasies of the Demography Lab will be covered. Lots and lots of homework. ;-)
Carl Mason, Mondays 1-2pm in the seminar room at 2232 Piedmont Ave. AND Wednesdays 1-3pm in the computer lab at 2232 Piedmont Ave.
Demography 260
3 units		 Special Topics in Demography: Language, Culture and Population.
This course is highly exploratory and experimental. Our purpose is to start to develop a framework through which to think about the relationships between culture, language, and population. A priori, these relationships are multiple and significant. However, they have gone almost entirely unstudied, with a couple of notable exceptions. For that reason, we will be doing a lot of cross-disciplinary reading and lateral thinking. We will have guest speakers (actually, interlocutors) off and on throughout the semester. Our long-term goal is to develop a new domain of research at this three-way intersection. For this semester, however, we will be happy if we just begin to explore some of the terrain and try to identify which areas appear most promising. Topics will include: the language of surveys and censuses; population change and language endangerment; networks and diffusion; and linguistic endogamy/exogamy. Jennifer Johnson-Hanks, Fridays 10am-12pm, seminar room (room 100), 2232 Piedmont Ave.