“The big perspective change from ancient DNA study is that people living today are almost never the descendants of the people in the same place thousands of years before” news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

In case this hasn't made it into your feeds, @lesja.bsky.social @karenguzzo.bsky.social @shelleydclark.bsky.social @drjenndowd.bsky.social Going straight into my lecture slides for this quarter!

"Our study found that preference for two children was not significantly stronger than preference for zero, one, or three children when competing work, financial, and family demands were taken into account"

The Graduate Group in Demography at the University of Pennsylvania is now accepting applications for its PhD program in Demography. We look forward to recruiting a strong and diverse cohort for Fall 2026! ➡️ Applications are due December 15, 2025 ⬅️ Learn More:

A must read from @drjenndowd.bsky.social When “Stuff Happens” After Vaccination open.substack.com/pub/jenndowd...

"Fundamentally, having a child is making a decision about the future." Great piece by @karenguzzo.bsky.social #demography #birthrates www.newsweek.com/low-birth-ra...

🎉 Big congrats to @wensu221.bsky.social Su, Postdoc at LCDS, for winning the Charles Price Prize in #Demography! 🏆 His work bridges national & subpopulation #mortality to reveal hidden patterns in health outcomes. A true star demographer in the making! 🌟 www.demography.ox.ac.uk/news/wen-su-...

If you missed @phbocquier.bsky.social's presentation at the Formal Demography working group last week, you can now watch the recording! ⏬

A secular transition is happening in countries around the world. Detailed explanation🧪 www.nature.com/articles/s41.... Many Muslim-majority countries, Hindu-majority India in early stage. Countries with large Buddhist & Christian populations in later stages. Blog: www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/...

1/ Contrary to recent claims by two political scientists, new work by @adrianraftery.bsky.social & Nick Irons estimates that COVID non-pharmacuetical interventions (NPIs) saved an estimated 860,000 lives in the US *in 2020 alone*. bmcglobalpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

We're hiring in wonderful Copenhagen 🇩🇰 Two or more open rank sociology professorships (tt assistant, associate with tenure, or full prof with tenure). You'll join a leading sociology department in Europe with many core fields represented! #sociology More 👇 jobportal.ku.dk/videnskabeli...

If you read 1 thing today, please make it this: my so-talented colleague @ericboodman.bsky.social explains why babies in the US are vaccinated at birth against hep B — and what the human costs of changing that policy would be. www.statnews.com/2025/09/11/n...

Uh, this seems concerning: "FDA Commissioner Marty Makary...and Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research director Vinay Prasad...are seeking to waive privacy protections on certain data about COVID vaccines and pregnant women, the article stated." 🧵1/3 www.medpagetoday.com/special-repo...

This excess mortality figure from Aug 2020 always stuck w/ me. The tragically high #s in the NE reflecting early unfettered transmission, the slight lull after trying to “flatten the curve” & realization of the long road ahead w/ gradual movement across the country. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The Heritage Foundation specifically named contraception as a "culprit" for low birth rates. The pronatalist movement is using bad demography to cast low birth rates as inherently problematic and thus justify pronatalist efforts, like reducing access to contraception. 1/

Persistent minimizing of the COVID death toll hits me especially hard in the #demography feels. To be clear: ➡️ Over one million Americans died of COVID-19. ➡️ Official COVID deaths were likely undercounted, not overcounted. jenndowd.substack.com/p/how-many-p...

The plenaries this year were excellent. Stuart Gietel-Basten argued passionately that demographers must reclaim the narrative around low fertility and drive the debate in a more productive, less dysfunctional, direction. We have the skills, and this issue *matters* for multiple reasons

🚨Job Offer🚨PhD Student Position The @lshtm.bsky.social, in partnership with the @mpidr.bsky.social is opening an 18-month Research Assistant position, with the successful candidate embarking on a PhD program at LSHTM. www.demogr.mpg.de/en/career_61... @ezagheni.bsky.social #phd #jobs #demography

The @uncpopcenter.bsky.social is recruiting for a postdoc for our Population Science Training Program. Applications are due November 17th, with a start date of August 2026. For more info about the program, visit www.cpc.unc.edu/training/pop... To apply, visit unc.peopleadmin.com/postings/306...

I feel like "used to be able to" is vastly underestimating us now. www.popularmechanics.com/science/a659...

If you’re wondering how much of what RFK Jr said yesterday about vaccines was true—almost none of it was. @FullerLab_UW is one of the most accomplished vaccinologists out there and her article is required reading to separate truth from falsehoods. theconversation.com/how-rfk-jr-s...

"[Heritage] blames “free love, pornography, careerism, the Pill, abortion, same-sex relations, and no-fault divorce” as culprits behind the decline of American marriages [and low birth rates]." That's a list of what this admin will be going after.

Vinay Prasad, a former adult oncologist, has moved to disrupt the childhood vaccine schedule by asserting - against all evidence - that administering multiple vaccines at the same time “could blunt their efficacy.” The added burden/delay of separating shots would sharply reduce US vaccination rates.

Looking forward to submissions to session "1310: Climate, Environmental Change, and Population Health" as part of the Mortality and Morbidity strand at PAA 2026 @popassocamerica.bsky.social! Call for papers is open until 5 Oct 2025 📮📮📮

👀 NEW: The group behind Project 2025 wants a "Manhattan Project" for more babies. We have the Heritage Foundation's closely-held draft paper taking a hard turn into "pronatalism." It pitches ripping up economic policy to induce straight, married couples to have more children. Gift link ⤵️

A potential silver lining to your recent cold? Some interesting new studies on interactions between COVID and the common cold. open.substack.com/pub/jenndowd... #medsky #episky #publichealth

A bizarre dogma has emerged among the anti-mRNA crowd that the only data we have on vaccines is from the original trial papers, rather than the HUGE volume of studies that came out subsequently...

Two exciting PhD positions at @oxforddemsci.bsky.social on predicting health outcomes at the population level and natural language of health and social care! Apply to work in a wonderful team.

This 🧵 is long so please bear with me. It is compiles evidence in a historical timeline on how effective #COVIDVaccines are. When a pandemic ends we quickly and easily forget the tools that got us out of it. So here is my labour day gift to you prompted by this headline.

What is Vinay Prasad afraid of? Coward.

Absolutely tragic that an unvaccinated baby died of whooping cough. Rates of vax uptake in England too low and this risks our children’s health 🧵

WE ARE HIRING! 2 Lecturers in Quantitative Social Science. Want a friendly interdisciplinary department in one of the world's most vibrant cities? This just might be for you. Apply by: 10 Oct www.ucl.ac.uk/work-at-ucl/...

Good decision. I've always found the evidence for the idea that we need chickenpox to circulate to boost immunity to shingles quite weak. (And in reality, what's happened in UK is that people who can afford the vaccine get it anyway.)

Enough is enough. The health of the country is in danger. Read our resignation letters: insidemedicine.substack.com/p/breaking-n...

Looking forward to being part of this panel, along with @econmsk.bsky.social and @jennifersciubba.bsky.social!

"I want different birth rates" always means "other people should change their reproductive lives to match my preferences"

Applications are open for @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellowships in Sociology - broadly construed to include sociology, demography, criminology, social & medical statistics, public policy, and social policy Deadline: 22 Sep More: www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/the-college/...

New infectious disease epi hire at @ucberkeleyofficial.bsky.social: aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05031 #episky #idsky #publichealth

📢 Interested in excess mortality methods, and want a challenge? I'm organising the "One Epidemic, Many Estimates" (1EME) project! Register *now* as a many analyst team (submissions due 15 March 2026), and then join us at LSE for a workshop on 21-22 May 2026! (1/n) www.lse.ac.uk/Economic-His...

🚨Open Positions!🚨 Postdoc/Research Scientist Positions Migration | Population Dynamics | Computational Demography Application Deadline: Oct 10, 2025 See job description here: www.demogr.mpg.de/en/career_61... #Postdoc #Jobs @ezagheni.bsky.social @perrottadaniela.bsky.social @ugobas.bsky.social

This is a really good, clear look at what's going on behind a scary headline, and also a properly good example of high-quality science communication: Jenn does talk about the data in detail, but you don't need a stats degree to understand the points she's making.

Relieved to finally see some highlighting of the empirical flaws of recent COVID revisionist takes and an articulation of how dangerous these messages actually are. #episky #medsky #publichealth #covid #policysky

After hearing stories of breast cancer surviviors panicked by recent headlines, I decided to revisit my take on the recent “COVID rekindling dormant cancer” paper. After reflection, I was too generous in calling the human results even “suggestive.” jenndowd.substack.com/p/covid-and-...

This new briefing paper from a larger team of demographer coauthors led by @amandajean.bsky.social complements the @theconversation.com piece three of us wrote last month described in the thread below. sites.utexas.edu/contemporary...

Are we doomed to a demographic destiny of decline because ladies aren't having babies? No. We've been here before. It turns out that population projections only describe one of many possible futures. Our actual future is still to be written.

Feeling alarmed over dire long-term population projections that suggest humanity will disappear? Don't be! Demographers generally aren't worried, and you shouldn't be either. @amandajean.bsky.social explains why in this great @ccfamilies.bsky.social brief. sites.utexas.edu/contemporary...

This brief was written in conjunction with @alisongemmill.bsky.social, @srhayford.bsky.social, @lesja.bsky.social, @drjenndowd.bsky.social, @lauralindberg.bsky.social. @shelleydclark.bsky.social, & myself, with editorial help from @sjss.bsky.social.

Check out OG Nerdy Girl alumna Dr. Jenn Dowd’s @drjenndowd.bsky.social perspective in this @huffpost.com article: "We’re Heading Toward A COVID Surge — Here’s When It’s Predicted To Peak." www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/covid-...?

First the shingles vaccine, now lithium? I'm all for keeping the good Alzheimer's news coming! This new work sounds really promising, but once again, I'll emphasize that the really solid part vis-à-vis causal inference was IN MICE. jenndowd.substack.com/p/the-lithiu... #episky #medsky