CSDA affiliates' research revolves around four signature themes: Population Composition and Redistribution; Family and Household Dynamics; Status of Children and Adolescents; and Health, Morbidity, and Mortality. We collect primary data and engage in the creative use of existing sources for all of these themes.

Perhaps the best-known dimension of our collective research program concerns population composition and redistribution. Work in this area falls into several intersecting foci, including racial and ethnic residential patterns, the determinants and consequences of residential mobility and internal migration, immigrant adaptation and incorporation, and urbanization in contemporary China. Our broad scientific objectives in this area are to gain a better comprehension of the causes and implications of the disparate geographic locations of racial and ethnic groups, to understand how immigrants become incorporated into and adapt–or fail to adapt–to host societies, and to explore the many aspects of changing population distribution patterns in China.

These studies naturally intersect with other themes. Albany researchers tackle myriad important issues related to changing family and household dynamics, both in the United States and abroad. Certainly, in the U.S. the postwar period has witnessed dramatic changes in patterns of marriage, divorce, and fertility–especially nonmarital fertility. The changing landscape of America's families and households has important implications for the status and well-being of children and adolescents. Our overriding objective in this area is to better understand how families, peers, neighborhoods, and schools contribute to the successful development of America's youth. Albany researchers also engage a variety of issues related to population health, morbidity, and mortality. These studies fall into two categories: documenting and identifying sources of variation in population health, and exploring the social, psychological, and cultural determinants of morbidity and mortality. Emphasis is given to vulnerable populations at both ends of the age distribution.

A defining characteristic of population research at the University at Albany is the extent to which specific research programs cut across these signature themes, often involving collaborations among two or more scholars, and increasingly cutting across disciplinary boundaries. More information about research in each area is provided below under the rubrics of Spatial Inequalities and Vulnerable Populations.

Click here for Spatial Inequalities Click here for Demography of Vulnerable Populations