Research > Research Themes > Growth and Structure of Populations > Mortality

Preston has long been a world leader in the study of mortality in human populations; in 2007, his seminal work on the “Preston curve”—the relationship between mortality and level of economic development—was reprinted in Int J Epid with extensive commentary; and he gave an invited lecture to the Royal Swedish Academy of Science on “The Amazing Decline in Mortality: Dimensions and Causes.” Current research, in Demography and via an NICHD R03, shows that sex differences in US mortality follow cohortspecific sex differences in smoking histories, and that projections of US mortality likely underestimate the gains in life expectancy foreseeable given declines in smoking uptake in younger cohorts; and is collaborating with E. Frankenberg on an NIA R01 investigating the mortality impact of the tsunami in Indonesia. Elo, with C. Turra, in Demography, uses Social Security data to show that low rates of mortality among Hispanics in the US are not the result of selection out of the US to Mexico of the less healthy; other work with Preston is described in A1.2 and A1.3. Ewbank worked on child health and mortality in developing countries with a particular focus on Africa, and is returning to this in conjunction with ACAP (A1.4) Zuberi has a longstanding interest in the study of mortality in Africa, e.g., Swing Low, Sweet Chariot: The Mortality Cost of Colonizing Liberia in the Nineteenth-Century and, in Genus, with A. Bawah, a study showing the extent of excess child mortality with the diminished socioeconomic status of their parents.