Campus Center for Demographic and Social Analysis (C-DASA)

Prior to the creation of the Center for Population, Inequality, and Policy, the Campus Center for Demographic and Social Analysis (C-DASA) organized research collaboration, seminars, and training for researchers and graduate students across the university. C-DASA affiliates used large-scale field experiments to study the effects of poverty on early childhood and jailhouse interviews to understand incarceration's impact on families. They capitalized on smart phone survey methods to follow up on hard-to-reach populations like parolees and adolescents over time. They linked millions of geo-coded records on ER visits to Census Data to determine whether community health centers reduce emergency room use for psychiatric care. They marshalled data from US states to determine whether higher minimum wages account for declining youth employment. With hundreds of millions of supermarket transactions, they measured whether U.S. Farm Bill programs led food stamp recipients to buy healthier foods. To predict healthy babies, faculty affiliates monitored movements in utero. From tiny kicks to big data, C-DASA promoted collaboration and advances in population science and well-being with weekly seminars, notices of funding opportunities, graduate student training, and small seed grants for research.

The School of Social Sciences offers graduate training in Demographic and Social Analysis (DASA).