Program Description
The field of demography is multidisciplinary in focus and practice, drawing on a wide range of social science perspectives. Graduate training at the Cornell Population Center (CPC) is similarly multidisciplinary and provides students with opportunities to develop fundamental demographic insights and methodological tools, as well as to engage with arguments from a range of perspectives.
Why Minor in Demography?
- New insights: Population dynamics are fundamental to social, economic, political, and environmental change, and an understanding of demographic processes is critical to answering some of our most pressing questions.
- Cutting-edge research: Demographers rely on a broad set of tools for analyzing demographic data, and weekly seminars provide exposure to new developments in data and methods from prominent scholars across the U.S. and abroad.
- Broader community: CPC offers many opportunities to connect students with researchers (students and faculty) in other disciplines using high-quality empirical techniques to answer population-related research questions.
- Additional funding: CPC regularly provides funding for student travel to professional population conferences (e.g., PAA) and offers seed funding to CPC students in need of research support. CPC research is also supported by major grants, and faculty are often looking for GRAs with demographic skills during the academic year and summer months.
Graduate Minor Requirements
Please note that, apart from meeting the course requirements, graduate minors must also have at least one Demography field member on their special committee.
The campus-wide graduate minor in Demography is available to Ph.D. students in all social science fields. To fulfill the requirements for the minor, students must successfully complete the following courses:
- GDEV 6070 Social Demography/PUBPOL 6050 Social Demography (3 credits)
- Provides a conceptual overview for studying population issues and introduces major subfields of study within demography.
- GDEV 6080 Demographic Techniques/PUBPOL 6060 Demographic Techniques (3 credits)
- Develops basic methodological tools in demography, including rate construction, single- and multiple-decrement life tables, and survival analysis.
- PUBPOL 6810 Demography Training Seminar (1 credit per section, 3 credits total needed)
- Participation in the CPC seminar series and monthly training workshops. Consistent enrollment is encouraged; at least 3 training credits (i.e., 3 semesters) are required.
- One elective course from the following list of courses:1
Course List
Code |
Title |
Hours |
| Microeconomics of International Development | |
| Introduction to GIS for Planners | |
| Methods for Spatial Economic and Demographic Analysis | |
| Introduction to Urban Data Science: Data, Interpretation, and Presentation | |
| Data and Development | |
| Data Science Workshop with R | |
| Seminar on Issues in African Development | |
| Text and Networks in Social Science Research | |
| Causal Inference in Observational Settings | |
| Studying Social Inequality Using Data Science | |
ILRIC 6367 | | |
| Neighborhoods, Housing, and Urban Policy | |
| Population Health for Health Managers | |
| The Economics and Regulation of Risky Health Behaviors | |
| The Economics and Regulation of Risky Health Behaviors | |
| Markets, Policy and Sustainability | |
| Health Policy | |
| Causal Analysis and Impact Evaluation in Public Policy | |
| Economics and Environmental Policy | |
| Qualitative, Survey, and Mixed Method Approaches to Policy Research | |
| Empirical Strategies for Policy Analysis | |
| Empirical Strategies for Policy Research II | |
| Family Demography | |
| Health Economics I | |
| Health Economics II | |
| Spatial Demography | |
| Social Inequality: Contemporary Theories, Debates, and Models | |
| Social Network: Theory and Applications | |
| Sociology of Education | |
| Urban Structure and Process | |