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John R. Wilmoth
Welcome to my
simple but functional web page.
Formally, I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Demography of the University of California at Berkeley, and a
researcher in the Berkeley's Center on
the Economics and Demography of Aging. I am also an affiliated faculty member in the Department of Sociology.
I have recently
returned to Berkeley after a two-year leave-of-absence. From mid-2005 until mid-2007, I worked
for the Population
Division of the United Nations in New York
City. The Population Division is a
very important organization, as it provides information and analysis of
population trends for UN Member States and thus helps to guide the
international political debate about such topics. The Population Division also produces the official UN
estimates and projections of world population trends, which are used by many
people for various purposes. I am
very proud to have been a part of this incredible organization for two years.
GENERAL INFORMATION
|
Address: |
Department of Demography |
Phone: |
+1 510-642-9688 or -9800 |
Graduate Advisor. As of
July 2007, I am once again the Graduate Advisor for the Department of
Demography and for the Graduate Group
in Sociology and Demography.
Curriculum Vitae. My
curriculum vitae is available in PDF format.
TEACHING
UC Berkeley is the
only university in the United States with a Department of Demography. Our primary emphasis is the training of
researchers within a graduate
program, where we offer both MA and PhD degrees in
Demography, as well as a PhD in Sociology and Demography (through the Graduate Group
in Sociology and Demography).
At the undergraduate level, we offer a minor in Demography but
no major.
Given our emphasis
on graduate education and research, a large portion of my teaching occurs
outside the usual classroom.
Several graduate students work together with me on various research
projects (see below), and this kind of involvement forms an important part of
their education. In the
traditional classroom setting, I teach courses on population change and
research methods in demography and/or sociology. Courses that I have taught in recent years are as follows:
·
An undergraduate
lecture course, “Population Issues,” Sociology 126 / Demography
126. This course is offered
annually (usually in the Fall semester), taught either by myself or by Prof. Jennifer
Johnson-Hanks.
·
A graduate
seminar on “Mortality and Health,” Demography 230. We try to offer this course every other
year.
·
A graduate
lecture course, “Advanced Demographic Analysis,” Demography 211. Normally, this course is offered every
other year during the Spring semester;
·
A Freshman Seminar, “Human Reproductive
Technologies: Science, Ethics, and Society,” Demography 24. This seminar has been offered twice
(Spring 2002 and 2004).
·
A graduate
seminar, “Population and Society,” Demography 200 / Sociology 220,
addressing classic as well as cutting-edge topics at the intersection of
sociology and demography. This
course was designed as a core component of the new Ph.D. program
in Sociology and Demography.
RESEARCH
Most of my research
concerns the enormous increase in human longevity that has occurred during the
past 250 years. This work has been
supported continuously since 1993 by a grant from the National Institute on Aging (NIA). Published and unpublished papers from
this project are listed on my CV. This work explores several related topics:
·
Causes of the
historical mortality decline
·
Future trends in
human mortality and life expectancy at birth
·
Exceptional
longevity and possible limits to the human life span
·
Mortality
differentials among social groups within populations
·
Variation in
mortality over the life course in humans
·
Familial
resemblance in mortality and longevity
Many of these
projects include a significant methodological component, which is addressed in
the context of the substantive research.
However, some methodological topics have become important research
projects of their own, including:
·
Methods for
forecasting mortality and life expectancy
·
Parametric
models for describing mortality differentials
·
Methods for
decomposing historical population trends into distinct components
This research has
also included a special emphasis on developing better sources of information
about historical patterns and trends in human mortality and life
expectancy. Some of this
information is now publicly available through the Human Mortality Database (HMD), a project
co-sponsored by UC Berkeley (with funding from the NIA) and the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research,
located in Rostock, Germany. The
HMD replaces the earlier Berkeley
Mortality Database (BMD).
However, the BMD website remains operational at this time, because it
still contains some data not yet available elsewhere (see explanation on the
BMD home page). A companion
project to the HMD, the Human Life-Table
Database (HLD), consists of a collection of ready-made life tables from
various sources. The HLD project
is co-sponsored by UC Berkeley (with funding from the NIA), the Max Planck
Institute for Demographic Research, and the Institut National d’Etudes Démographiques (INED), located in Paris, France.
Aside from the work
on human mortality and longevity, other topics of my research (both past and
present) include:
·
Demographic
impact of assisted reproductive technologies (ART)
·
History of the
debate about world population growth
·
Contribution of
immigration to population growth in the United States
·
Methods for
forecasting international migration
·
Methods for
characterizing demographic variation as a function of age, period, and cohort
·
Methods for
assessing fertility levels in the presence of changes in the timing of births
over the life course
PUBLIC SERVICE
Currently, I am
serving on an expert panel on the topic of “Divergent trends in longevity in
high-income countries.” The panel was convened by the Committee on Population of the
National Academy of Sciences. The
panel’s task is to explore and hopefully explain the causes behind the
declining position of the United States in international longevity rankings.
Earlier, I
participated in the 2003 Technical Panel on Assumptions and Methods, organized
by the Social Security Advisory Board
(SSAB). The SSAB is an independent,
bipartisan, federal agency charged with advising the President, the Congress,
and the Commissioner of Social Security on matters related to the Social
Security and Supplemental Security Income programs. Every four years, the SSAB convenes a Technical Panel to
review the assumptions and methods used in projecting the Trust Funds of the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) and Disability
Insurance (DI) systems. The 2003
Technical Panel met monthly from January until September, usually in Washington,
D.C. Our Report,
released in October 2003, contains a detailed evaluation of the assumptions and
methods used to assess the financial solvency of the current system (see also
the annual Trustees Report).
CHRISTIAN MORTENSEN
It is often the
case that a quantitative social researcher like myself has too little contact
with the people who are the subjects of his inquiry. Thanks to good fortune and to some initiative on my part, I
had the pleasure of knowing Christian Mortensen – an American man of Danish
origin who died in April 1998 at the age of 115 years in San Rafael, California
– during the last three years of his life. For photos and more information, click here.