Population Aging: On the Future of a Delusion (Duke)

Thursday, 03/25/2021, 3:30 pm.   ARCHIVED EVENT

Location: online

The Duke Center for Population Health and Aging presents Herbert Smith, Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania, speaking on  “Population Aging:  On the Future of a Delusion”

Demography has a lot of great tools for peering into the future.  We knew that declining fertility was going to make societies older.  Throw in declines in mortality, especially at older ages, and the aging and aged societies that so many of us live in were always in the cards.  But does the fact that aged societies are not unexpected make them any less revolutionary?  I have wondered for some time whether the gradualism and continuity in the demographic process that has gotten us to this point has blinded us to the oddity of where we are.  Whereas most talks feature a speaker trying to convince an audience that he or she knows something that they do not, here the speaker would like to know what everyone else knows about the future of aging and aged societies that he does not.  This being 2021, Covid-19 will be mentioned.

Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link.

Herbert L. Smith is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Population Studies Center (2005-09, 2011-14) at the University of Pennsylvania, and (2009-13) Président, Commission d’Évaluation, Institut National d’Études Démographiques (France). Formerly he was Associate Dean for the Social Sciences, School of Arts and Sciences. He is an elected member (1991) of the Sociological Research Association and in 2002 received the Clifford C. Clogg Award from the Population Association of America for early career achievement. Current research involves the use of “double sampling” to reduce bias due to non-response in survey research and the correspondence between econometric models for stochastic time series and demographic cohort projection models, with applications to the forecasting of school enrollments. Other research interests include the design of social and demographic studies, the experimental model, causation, representation, measurement, and matching.
Zoom Seminar. Please contact laura.satterfield@duke.edu to obtain Seminar Link.