The US no longer has a refugee program. There are many nouns to accurately describe a whites-only visa, but ‘refugee program’ is not one of them. Congress created and sustained our refugee program with bipartisan support over generations. Now Congress allows one person to simply terminate it.

As of June, all but three of the 7,730 refugees admitted into the U.S. in fiscal 2026 were from South Africa, according to newly released State Department data. www.notus.org/immigration/...

In fact, undocumented people pay into the system and never receive benefits. The Social Security Trustees build this into long term fiscal projections for the program because of how much this offsets long term debt in the program.

UC-Berkeley & NBER virtual workshop on the Macroeconomic Effects of Population Aging organized by Adrien Auclert, Will Dow, and Ron Lee submit papers by Aug 5: www.nber.org/calls-papers... @popassocamerica.bsky.social @popresearchctrs.bsky.social

Macroeconomic Effects of Population Aging

nber.org

🗣️ Published today in @aeajournals.bsky.social. Ethan Lewis and I use a visa lottery, as a nationwide randomized experiment, to test the effects of foreign labor on US firms and workers. doi.org/10.1257/app.... A concise summary from @nber.org —> www.nber.org/digest/20221...

This is perhaps the most impressive #medical study I have seen in years: www.nature.com/articles/s41... It will save a lot of lives.

An ECG biomarker for sudden cardiac death discovered with deep learning - Nature

A deep-learning model trained on electrocardiogram (ECG) waveforms identifies an easily visible biomarker that predicts sudden cardiac death more accurately than the current clinical state of the art.

nature.com

NEW: A spokesperson for U.S. Health and Human Services confirmed to Stateline on Friday that the agency is canceling 53 out of 67 grants, worth about $68 million, under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program, affecting grantees in more than two dozen states.

Federal health agency cancels most of its teen pregnancy prevention grants • Stateline

A spokesperson for U.S. Health and Human Services confirmed to Stateline on Friday that the agency is canceling 53 out of 67 grants, worth about $68 million, under the Teen Pregnancy Prevention Progra...

stateline.org

This study of four cohorts of French schoolchildren shows that the gender gap in math (girls falling behind) begins essentially immediately as soon as kids start school. They use the natural variation in kids' ages at school start to show that it's school entry, not age, that triggers the change.

Rapid emergence of a maths gender gap in first grade - Nature

Boys and girls exhibit very similar maths scores upon school entry, but a gender gap in favour of boys becomes highly significant after 4 months of schooling, which increases with years of schooling,&...

nature.com

Atheen nicely summarizes the paper. I will just add that the DCC issues we study are increasingly recognized in other contexts, e.g. discrimination www.annualreviews.org/content/jour... and demography onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1... where terminology like identity fluidity is often used.

Atheendar Venkataramani@atheendar.bsky.social · 5mo ago

1/ New #paper by Chuck Manski, @johnmullahy.bsky.social, and me in the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics (@amstatnews.bsky.social).

After the Dobbs decision, patients experiencing miscarriages in states with abortion bans have fewer choices in the type of care they get, and they are receiving lower-quality care as well. My latest: www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

US abortion restrictions are hindering access to miscarriage care, study finds

States with abortion bans are turning away from medications to a wait-and-see approach, with care falling below standards

theguardian.com

Mindel Sheps wrote many beautiful papers about the mathematics of demography. Her papers "On the person years concept in epidemiology and demography" in Millbank and "Shall we count the living or the dead?" in NEJM are my favorites. Also, she mentored Jane Menken!!!

American Statistical Association History of Statistics @hos-asa.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Mindel Sheps b #OTD 1913 (d 13 Jan 1973) ASA Fellow 1970. Physician, political healthcare activist, biostatistics professor, advisor to WHO, she made substantial contributions to mathematical demography but is best known for her highly influential NEJM 1958 paper on the asymmetry of relative risk.

A commentary I wrote on new research by Arun Hendi & Veronica Clevenstine showing that Black immigrant life expectancy in the US is extremely high -- high enough that increased immigration accounts for almost 15% of declining Black/White life exp gaps, 1994-2019 (pdf should be ungated at this link)

Taking heterogeneity seriously: black immigrant life expectancy in the United States

Abstract. The article by Hendi and Clevenstine (Am J Epidemiol. 2026;XXX(XX):XXXX–XXXX) documents notably high life expectancy among US Black immigrants, a

academic.oup.com

Finally, here's an absolute banger of an article, published just last month (Hoffman et al. 2026), showing how incredibly powerful the cohort patterning of influenza deaths is, in regular (not pandemic) years, corresponding to how circulating strains match up w what people were exposed to as kids

Childhood immune imprinting shapes cohort and period influenza mortality

Childhood exposure to different influenza strains shapes the age-profile of seasonal influenza mortality.

science.org

demoscapes.org is a visual atlas of demographic surfaces hosted at @mpidr.bsky.social. It is also my passion project growing out of my 2016 human mortality database explorer. Did you publish something containing Lexis surfaces? Consider reaching out and having your work featured on the site.

Leah Abrams@leahrabrams.bsky.social · 6mo ago

Check out @jschoeley.com's very cool project: Demoscapes! It now features interactive Lexis surfaces based on our recent PNAS paper tracking cohort trends in major causes of death in the US. It's (to us data lovers) so fun! demoscapes.org/collections/...

Every single one of the above choices tends to create a negative wage gap between H-1B workers and US workers. Not one of them is justifiable. There is a right way to do the analysis, so I did it right, in a new paper at @rfberlin.bsky.social —> www.rfberlin.com/network-pape...

Immigrant-Native Wage Gaps and Immigration Tariffs: Examining the Case for an H-1B Visa Tax

ROCKWOOL Foundation

rfberlin.com

Even if "singularities" could be ruled out it's way past time caring about GDP in the absence of indicators of what a specific growth path entails for human health and the natural environment.

Sharon O'Dea@sharonodea.com · 8mo ago

Quite rare to see a chart that says quite so overtly that no one involved has the slightest clue what’s happening here

The degree of randomness in individual survival is vastly underappreciated

Demography - the flagship journal of PAA@readdemography.bsky.social · 9mo ago

In “Limits of Predicting Individual-Level Longevity,” Badolato et al. assess a range of classic statistical & machine learning survival analysis models. @nickirons.bsky.social @monjalexander.bsky.social @ugobas.bsky.social @ezagheni.bsky.social @mpidr.bsky.social read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...

Twin Cities' (Hennepin+Ramsey) counties filings for evictions up 40% in Jan 2026 over 2023-24 baseline @evictionlab.bsky.social. In raw counts, +9% to 1,330 in Jan 2026 from 1,220 in prior month. In baseline years (2023 & 2024), filings lower in Jans than Decs. evictionlab.org/eviction-tra...

This was a very cool talk, Chiara gave a great overview of bivariate health-death distributions. The recording is here for those interested: www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0Jl...

Formal Demography Working Group meeting 13

YouTube video by Formal Demography

youtube.com

Vanessa di Lego@vdilego.bsky.social · 9mo ago

It´s starting ! Join us for this amazing talk from Chiara Micheletti! 👇#demography

Also, its illegal to discuss gender in some American universities now.

Don Moynihan@donmoyn.bsky.social · 10mo ago

This is the second time in three months a DHS agent called a US citizen a "bitch" as he shot her. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/whos-threa...

Less than a month before my debut book "What We Inherit" gets released! You can place pre-orders now: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco... Lucky to have gotten to collaborate (and argue) with Sam Trejo for the last 5+ years on this.

What We Inherit

Debating the use of genomic tools and their societal impact

press.princeton.edu

Between 2013 and 2023, private equity ownership of US fertility clinics increased nearly tenfold, from 3.7% to over 32%, with affiliated sites responsible for the majority of #IVF cycles by 2023. ja.ma/49ubuWl

Five real global health wins in 2025 1.HPV vaccination scaled faster than expected; 2. measles/rubella eliminated in several countries; 3. long-acting HIV PrEP (lenacapavir) approved; 4. progress on TB vaccines/diagnostics; 5. A promising new antimalarial. www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

Five big global health wins in 2025 that will save millions of lives

From HIV to TB, scientists and doctors made breakthroughs in treatment and prevention of some of the world’s deadliest diseases

theguardian.com

Betty Reid Soskin, the National Park Service’s oldest ranger, has died. She was 104.

Betty Reid Soskin, Oldest U.S. Park Ranger and Trailblazing Historian, Dies at 104 | KQED

Betty Reid Soskin, the nation’s oldest National Park Service ranger and a pioneering historian at Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front National Historical Park, devoted her life to preserving Black histo...

kqed.org

Big new blogpost! My guide to data visualization, which includes a very long table of contents, tons of charts, and more. --> Why data visualization matters and how to make charts more effective, clear, transparent, and sometimes, beautiful. www.scientificdiscovery.dev/p/salonis-gu...

The Toronto Population Network is holding a conference on 6 November at Hart House at UofT. Keynote from @ridhikashyap.bsky.social! If you're in Toronto come along and help us build the community of demographers and population researchers here! Registration: www.eventbrite.com/e/toronto-po...

The Economic Demography Workshop will be on May 6, at the PAAs in St. Louis. See the call for papers 👇 Thanks to co-chairs @hnmansour.bsky.social & @mguldi.bsky.social !

It was surprising and super interesting to learn briefly how the US war production board was coordinating clinical trials and data sharing for antibiotic development, when I was doing research for this piece -

Saloni@scientificdiscovery.dev · 2y ago

Many people talk about the "Golden Age of Antibiotics", but I hadn't seen it visualized properly. Just how many types of antibiotics were discovered during that time? So, I visualized it myself!

publichealth.berkeley.edu/articles/new...

What do the looming cuts to Medicaid really mean?

Health policy expert Will Dow breaks down the risks—and potential state-level response.

publichealth.berkeley.edu

During the 1st week of June we held our 11th Annual Berkeley Workshop in Formal Demography. We had a terrific workshop & are already looking forward to next year! TY to NIH & to instructors @ayesha-mahmud.bsky.social @rchung.bsky.social Josh Goldstein @dennisfeehan.bsky.social @jnobles.bsky.social!