🚨New study led by @josehcms.bsky.social in the Journal of Urban Health. We document how an urban longevity penalty ⏬ turned into an urban advantage ⏫ between 2006 and 2023 in Brazil. link.springer.com/article/10.1... @marilianep.bsky.social #demography #brazil #cities #longevity

The Emergence of an Urban Mortality Advantage in Brazil: An Assessment of Age and Causes-of-Death Contributions to the Urban–Rural Mortality Gap - Journal of Urban Health

Brazil has historically seen higher mortality among urban residents compared to rural counterparts, despite better self-reported health among urban residents and better access to healthcare services. ...

link.springer.com

In a new study out in Science Advances, we estimated that 19% more COVID-19 deaths than those officially reported occurred in the United States between March 2020 and December 2021. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/... #demography #epidemiology #COVID-19

Applying machine learning to identify unrecognized COVID-19 deaths recorded as other causes of death in the United States

A machine learning approach suggests that COVID-19 deaths were undercounted unevenly across sociodemographic groups in 2020–2021.

science.org

🚨New paper out in Demographic Research🚨 and my first foray into demographic methods. It develops a new method to quantify how specific subpopulations drive demographic gaps. www.demographic-research.org/articles/vol... @demresjournal.bsky.social @pophel.bsky.social #demography #methods

I'm extremely grateful to the Finnish Cultural Foundation @skr.fi for awarding me a grant to study how immigration is contributing to health and mortality trends in Finland and other Nordic countries! #skr2026 #kulttuurirahastontuella @pophel.bsky.social

📢Doctoral Defence: Ulla Suulamo - "Long-term trends in mortality differences - Register-based studies in Finland, 1970–2020" 16 October 2025 at 12:00 Address: Porthania, PIII, Yliopistonkatu 3, Helsinki

🚨🚨 We are hiring 2 postdocs at PopHel – MaxHel. If you are interested in health inequalities and social determinants of health this is a great opportunity! Amazing working environment ✨, unique data infrastructure, and a truly interdisciplinary and international center 🌍. Deadline October 31st.

Helsinki Institute for Demography and Population Health@pophel.bsky.social · 10mo ago

🚨Job alert!🚨 Helsinki Institute for Demography and Population Health is recruiting 2 postdocs. Join our team and investigate social inequalities in health! jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki... #postdoc #demography #socialsciences #socialdata

Had a great experience ⭐ at #SLLS2025! I hope we gave a good overview of what is possible with the amazing Finnish 🇫🇮 register data! @pophel.bsky.social @sllshome.bsky.social

Helsinki Institute for Demography and Population Health@pophel.bsky.social · 11mo ago

Our symposium from #SLLS2025 @sllshome.bsky.social consisted of research from Shubh Sharma @eugeniopaglino.bsky.social @olivia-mcevoy.bsky.social mcevoy.bsky.social @moberndorfer.bsky.social orfer.bsky.social Lauren Bishop and registry data expertise from Hanna Remes. Thanks to all who attended!

An estimated 440 excess deaths were attributed to the January 2025 wildfires in Los Angeles County, underscoring indirect health effects and the need for improved mortality tracking. ja.ma/4oFM3af #MedSky

New study 🚨 out in @jama.com! We find that California wildfires🔥in January may have contributed 440 excess deaths in Los Angeles County. This estimate significantly exceeds the 30 direct fatalities linked to these events jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... @pophel.bsky.social @helsinki.fi

Excess Deaths Attributable to the Los Angeles Wildfires From January 5 to February 1, 2025

This study aims to estimate the number of excess deaths attributable to the Los Angeles wildfires using an interrupted time series design.

jamanetwork.com

As promised, here a summary of our newest paper on metropolitan and nonmetropolitan mortality in the US 1/8🧵 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/... @astokespop.bsky.social @pennpsc.bsky.social @pophel.bsky.social @ruralhealth.bsky.social @jruralhealth.bsky.social

Evolution of the US nonmetropolitan mortality disadvantage by sex, state, and year, 1999‐2019

Purpose To examine disparities in nonmetropolitan and metropolitan mortality by state and sex from 1999 to 2019. Methods We calculate age-standardized mortality rates for nonmetropolitan and metro...

onlinelibrary.wiley.com

Very important work by Jacob Bor and colleagues. Poor data quality of demographic and socioeconomic information on death certificates remains a big obstacle to the production of timely mortality statistics disaggregated by more than age, sex, and selected race and Hispanic origin groups.

JAMA Health Forum@jamahealthforum.com · last yr.

From @jama.com: The life expectancy of American Indian and Alaska Native individuals is underestimated due to racial misclassification on death certificates, according to this longitudinal cohort study. ja.ma/447kyg5

New (core demography) paper on US metropolitan and nonmetropolitan mortality out in the Journal of Rural Health. Stay tuned for a thread 🧵summarising the key findings! #Demography

Journal of Rural Health@jruralhealth.bsky.social · last yr.

Evolution of the US nonmetropolitan mortality disadvantage by sex, state, and year, 1999-2019 from @eugeniopaglino.bsky.social et al. #RuralHealth onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10....

How many deaths are attributable to the slowdown📉in mortality improvements in the US? In a new study with @astokespop.bsky.social and @wrigleyfield.bsky.social we estimate 525,505 excess deaths in 2023 alone jamanetwork.com/journals/jam... @jamahealthforum.bsky.social #demography #epidemiology 🧵1/7

🚨 Another article on health and migration out in Social Science and Medicine! With Pekka Martikainen and Irma Elo, we look at the mortality of internal migrants in Finland www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Internal migration, health selection, and the salmon bias: A register-based study of Finland

Studies on international migrants have repeatedly found a mortality advantage of migrant over native-born populations. Data artifacts, differential pr…

sciencedirect.com

🚨 New article out in Social Science & Medicine! Irma Elo and I take a deeper look at trends in life expectancy for foreign-born and native-born populations in the United States before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

US-Born and Foreign-born Life Expectancy by Race and Hispanic Origin before and during the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States

Interdisciplinary health scholarship has long documented the lower mortality of the foreign-born compared to the US-born populations. In this study, w…

sciencedirect.com

The Great Birdington Declaration

Bill Hanage@billhanage.bsky.social · last yr.

Bird flu typically causes nasty illness in poultry (for a lot of reasons, some in the article), which is one reason why this will not make eggs cheaper. There are also numerous other reasons why this is not a good idea www.nytimes.com/2025/03/18/h...

So many great things going on at @pophel.bsky.social!

Helsinki Institute for Demography and Population Health@pophel.bsky.social · last yr.

📢 PopHel Newsletter for Summer 2024 - Winter 2025 is out!! 📰 To receive our newsletter you can subscribe to our mailing list by sending an email to mila.lyytinen@helsinki.fi 📩 You will also receive information on upcoming public talks 👩‍🏫 and open positions at PopHel ‼️ www.helsinki.fi/en/helsinki-...

Amazing podcast! Thank you for the suggestion. Nice to see the intricacies of demographic data becoming the source of so much attention.

Jenn Dowd@drjenndowd.bsky.social · last yr.

Great to hear “extinguished Professor” 😂 Tim Smeeding spitting facts on Social Security coding practices & how there are definitely not millions of 150 year olds getting payments. #econsky #policysky podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m...

We opened two new postdoc positions! Deadline 14th March. If you want to work with amazing Finnish register data on social inequalities in population health, this is the place to be. Get in touch with us if you have questions. jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki...

Two Postdoctoral Researchers on Social Inequalities in Health

Two Postdoctoral Researchers on Social Inequalities in Health

jobs.helsinki.fi

The first report from our collaboration with the Society of Actuaries (SOA) is now out! @astokespop.bsky.social We look at cause-specific excess mortality in the US and reflect on the most likely explanations for the gap between excess and COVID-19 mortality. www.soa.org/resources/re...

All the sessions I proposed for #PAA2025 have been approved! 🎉 Lots of data-focused research with sessions on 1) Spatial Data and Methods, 2) Assessing the Quality of Demographic Data, and 3) Enhancing Existing Data with Statistical and Demographic Methods. Thanks for all the amazing submissions!

The deadline for #PAA2025 🤩 is in 11 days! If your work uses innovative spatial data collection techniques or applies spatial data analysis, small-area estimation, or GIS to answer questions in population health consider submitting it to my session 405: Spatial Data Collection and Methods!

Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #1,315,797!

Fantastic work as usual! Socio-behavioral factors should be brought back to the center of mortality research. AFAIK there was no session on this topic at the 2024 PAA Annual Meeting and very few scattered papers/posters.

Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research (MPIDR)@mpidr.bsky.social · 2y ago

A study by S. Preston @uofpenn.bsky.social , Y. Vierboom @princetonupress.bsky.social & M. Myrskylä @mpidr.bsky.social found that behavioral changes, such as a decline in smoking & an expansion of education, have contributed to improvements in U.S. mortality. www.demogr.mpg.de/go/USmortality-Trends

I had forgotten just how good is Fabrizio De Andé. Volume 8 is an absolute masterpiece, each song is unique, could listen to it in a loop for hours www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Volume 8 - YouTube

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

youtube.com

My dissertation "The Demography of Shocks: Migration and Mortality under the Influence of Environmental and Epidemiological Shocks" is now publicly available! repository.upenn.edu/entities/pub...

I shared my latest article on Reddit. Interesting reactions, mostly on Florida: home insurance market disappearing, if you are old enough sea-level rise will not affect you, environmental amenities (warm weather) compensate for the risk of hurricanes. www.reddit.com/r/science/co...

Reddit - Dive into anything

This community is a place to share and discuss new scientific research. Read about the latest advances in astronomy, biology, medicine, physics, social science, and more. Find and submit new publications and popular science coverage of current research.

reddit.com

🚨🚨🚨 New paper out in Pop and Environment! I estimate excess migration associated with hurricanes in the US Findings: 1) post hurricane migration is rare 2) damage is the strongest predictor 3) outmigrants move to counties exposed to future natural disasters link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Estimating excess migration associated with tropical storms in the USA 1990–2010 - Population and Environment

Tropical storms are among the most devastating natural disasters in the USA. Climate change is projected to make them even more destructive, and the number of people and properties at risk has steadil...

link.springer.com

Amazing work from colleagues (1st author E Paglino, sr author A Stokes) counting the unrecognized COVID deaths www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/.... I'm pasting the maps here b/c everyone loves maps, but the evidence that most convinced me was the timing of excess deaths vs COVID deaths (next skeet).

🚨New article out in PNAS! We find 162,886 more excess deaths from natural causes than COVID-19 deaths in the first 30 mo of the pandemic and provide evidence that many of them are unrecognised COVID-19 deaths @astokespop.bsky.social https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2313661121 (1/1)