Professor of Demography and Statistics, University of California, Berkeley.
Chair, Department of Demography, UCB
Married to Bernadette Bell, 27 August 1982.
Office: 2232 Piedmont Avenue, Berkeley, California 94720-2120
Phone 510-642-1578; Fax 510-643-8558
Electronic Mail:
wachter@demog.berkeley.edu
NEWS
The 2008 Distinguished Service Award of the Division of Social Sciences at U.C. Berkeley was presented to Ken Wachter on 20 May 2008, by Dean Jon Gjerde, with Vice Chancellor George Breslauer in attendance.
FAMILY AND COMMUNITY
Evelyn Sidman Wachter, Mrs. John H. Wachter, died on Tuesday, 15 April 2008, at age 97. Obituaries are given here.
In June 2007, Ken Wachter received the Alumni Letter-in-Life Award and presented the Commencement Address at the 146th Commencement Exercises of the Pingry School in Martinsville, New Jersey, on Sunday, 10 June 2007. The text of the address is also available as a PDF file (Portable Data Format). Recent previous recipients of the Letter in Life include Douglass Macrae in 2006, David Gernert in 2005, Michael Chertoff in 2004, William Engel in 2003, and Stephen F. Newhouse in 2002. The award was presented by Lori Havilopoulos, President of the Pingry Alumni Association. A luncheon in honor of the recipient was hosted by Elizabeth and Miller Bugliari and attended by Headmaster Nat Conard and a number of members of the Classes of 1964 and 1965.
The Sidman Family History by Evelyn Sidman Wachter has been posted here in Portable Data Format. The Preface and first four chapters can also be accessed in a shorter PDF file, Chapters 1 to 4 as can the index. A searchable index is in preparation.
RESEARCH OVERVIEW
As a mathematical demographer and statistician, I study systematic constraints and random influences that shape the structure of human populations. I helped develop methods of computer simulation to understand the rarity of coresident family members in pre-industrial English households. With these methods, I am now forecasting the kin and family support available to new generations of elderly in the Twentyfirst century. Working in "non-linear" demography, I have identified mechanisms that give rise to specific kinds of cycles in fertility and population growth. I am currently interested in patterns of mortality at extreme ages shared between humans and other species, trying to reconcile them with statistical models for long-term processes of evolutionary change.
CURRICULUM VITAE
Biographical information is found at the end of this home page. A full Curriculum Vitae in Portable Data Format can be obtained by clicking here.
COURSES
Demography 250, Mathematical Demography, was offered in Fall 2007 live to students at Berkeley over a video link to students at UCLA. Access to videos of the lectures will soon be available to University of California students on a special website. The syllabus for Demography 250 is available here.
In Fall 2008, Prof. Wachter will be teaching Demography 110 and Demography 210. Course descriptions for Demography 110 and Demography 210 are found here.
The course Demography 161W on ``Population and Policy in the World of the 21st Century'' was taught be Professor Wachter in Spring 2007 at the UC Center in Washington D.C. with a Reading List posted here.
Office hours are Wednesdays 1:30 to 3:00 in Room 208 of 2232 Piedmont Avenue, A sign-up sheet is posted outside Room 208.
WORKING PAPERS ON THE WEBSITE
These papers may be accessed in Portable Data Format (PDF) or in some cases in HTML. The papers presented on this home page are mainly prepublication drafts, working papers, or updated reports on material previously published. These papers should not be cited, reproduced, or redistributed without the express permission of Professor Wachter. Please be strict about observing copyright provisions. The appropriate way to give other people access to these materials is to provide them the URL of this home page. Comments and suggestions via post or e-mail would be much appreciated.
The field of Spatial Demography was featured in a special collection in the 25 October 2005 issue of PNAS, with an introductory essay by Ken Wachter. The introduction has been published on-line on 17 October 2005 at www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.0508155102.
An analysis of proposals regarding tempo effects in mortality measures is presented in ``Tempo and its Tribulations'' published on 11 November 2005 online at www.demographic-research.org/volumes/vol13/9/.
A keynote address on ``The Past, Present, and Future of Demography'' was presented at the Grand Opening of the new buildings for the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rostock, Germany and published in the electronic journal Demographic Research.
A 1982 paper by Dr. George R. Merriam and Ken Wachter has been featured in the Classic Papers Series of the American Journal of Physiology. As part of its Legacy Project, the American Physiological Society has commissioned essays on a selection of classic papers published since the Society's founding in 1887. The essay on the Merriam and Wachter paper is by Douglas Curran-Everett. It appears in the September 2005 issue of AJP-Endocrinology and Metabolism 289:E363-E365, entitled ``Estimation of dose-response curves and identification of peaks in hormone pulsations: classic marriages of statistics to science.'' Readers with subscription access to the AJP can find the essay at http://ajpendo.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/289/3/E363. University of California readers can find it through the U.C. Melvyl system E-Journal Guide under http://melvyl.cdlib.org by clicking on E-journal lists and then on U.C. Berkeley Electronic Journals, and scrolling down to American Journal of Physiology: Endocrinology and Metabolism.
A paper with David Steinsaltz and Steve Evans presenting a generalized mathematical model for Mutation-Selection Balance is posted on the Quantitative Biology E-Print Archive. A version appears in Advances in Applied Mathematics, volume 35, pages 16 to 33.
The opening chapter ``Biodemography of Fertility and Family Formation'' from Offspring, edited by K. W. Wachter and R. A. Bulatao, published by the National Academies Press on 1 April 2003, appears in html format.
The complete volume Offspring is available through this link to the website of the National Academies Press.
An essay on Bio-Social Opportunities for Surveys from Cells and Surveys, edited by C. Finch, J. Vaupel, and K. Kinsella, published by the National Academies Press in 2001, appears in html format.
The Introduction to the 1997 volume Between Zeus and the Salmon appears in html format.
The complete volume Between Zeus and the Salmon: The Biodemography of Longevity . is available through this link to the website of the National Academies Press. This book edited by Kenneth Wachter and Caleb Finch was published in 1997.
A version of AIDS and the Elderly of Thailand by Kenneth W. Wachter, John Knodel, and Mark VanLandingham appears in the journal Demography, volume 39, pages 25 to 41.
The Journal of Econometrics, in a special issue on health edited by Alok Bhargava (volume 112, pages 193-206), has published a more definitive version of the following draft paper ``Parental Bereavement and Heterogeneous Impacts of AIDS in Thailand'' by Kenneth Wachter, John Knodel, and Mark VanLandingham.
The text of an unpublished working paper with forecasts on
2030s Seniors (text)
appears in pdf format, and the figures for it may be obtained in
pdf format in
2030s Seniors (figures)
The text of an updated version of a paper on
Kinship Resources for the Elderly: An Update (text)
with new simulation results is available in pdf format.
It builds on a paper published
on 29 December 1997 in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
Society of London B 352: 1811-1817. The figures are available in pdf format
in
Kinship Resources (figures)
The text of an updated version of the paper
Testing the Validity of Kinship
Microsimulation: An Update (text) is available in pdf format.
It builds on a paper by Kenneth W. Wachter, Debra Blackwell,
and Eugene A. Hammel which appeared in the
Journal of Mathematical and Computer Modeling 26: 89-104 in 1997.
The paper Measuring Local Heterogeneity with 1990 Census Data by Kenneth Wachter and David Freedman, is available through a link to website of the online journal Demographic Research.
D.A. Freedman and K.W. Wachter (2001) Census adjustment: Statistical promise or statistical illusion? Technical Report #596 [PDF]
K.W. Wachter and D.A. Freedman (2000) The fifth cell: Correlation bias in U.S. census adjustment Evaluation Review, vol. 24 pp. 191-211 [PDF-preprint]
Statistical Controversies
in Census 2000,by Lawrence D. Brown, Morris L. Eaton,
David A. Freedman, Stephen P. Klein,
Richard A. Olshen, Kenneth W. Wachter,
Martin T. Wells, and Donald Ylvisaker.
Statistics Department Working Paper 537, based on a
paper published in Jurimetrics, 39, 347-375.
An overview of stochastic demography by KWW appears in the new Encyclopedia of Population, edited by Paul Demeny and Geoffrey McNicoll, published by Macmillan Reference USA, New York. Information on obtaining the encyclopedia can be found from Gale Corporation with this link.
Levels of Demographic Randomness:
Evidence from the Wrigley and Schofield Parish Series
(Text without figures.)
WORK IN PROGRESS
THE SOCSIM PROGRAM
SOCSIM is a demographic computer microsimulation program developed by Eugene A. Hammel and Kenneth Wachter over the years since 1970. It has been applied to a variety of problems in family demography, aging, kinship, anthropological, and historical demography. Those who are interested may click to consult a Description of SOCSIM and a selected SOCSIM bibliography , as well as a demonstration program, and full SOCSIM Technical Documentation . This documentation is from the programmer's point of view. For the user, there are descriptions of the key data structures of SOCSIM, the population and marriage lists, called the opop and omar files for input and output, along with the supervisory file for specifying parameters for runs, and a guide to the keywords used for specifying demographic rates
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION: EDUCATION
AWARDS
CHRONOLOGY OF POSITIONS
RECENT PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Ambrose, our standard poodle, born on 21 October 2001, is a CAL fan.
