Current Seminar
Any enquiries regarding this seminar should be directed to Professor Jacques Poot (jpoot@waikato.ac.nz)
Monday 18 November 2013
1:10 - 2:00pm
Room KG.07
Professor Leo van Wissen, NIDI, The Netherlands
How long and healthy will we live? And what does that imply for retirement?
Abstract:
Recent research shows that life expectancy will increase substantially for coming generations. About half of newborn girls today may expect to live until 100 years of age, based on novel ways of extrapolation of mortality trends. Nevertheless, there is much controversy around such projections. In my presentation I will give a short overview of different views, Next, more insight is given into a number of new approaches for projecting mortality and life expectancy, including recent work from the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) and the University of Groningen. Third, the question of how much these additional years will be lived in good health is addressed, and the implications of these trends for effectiveness and fairness of increasing retirement age is addressed.
Speaker's Bio:
Leo van Wissen is director of the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI) in The Hague. NIDI is the national demographic research centre for the Netherlands, which is well known throughout the world. He is also Professor of Economic Demography at the Faculty of Spatial Sciences of the University of Groningen. His research interests include demographic modelling and forecasting, ageing, regional population change and spatial interaction and he has supervised a number of PhD students on such topics. Recently he has been active in the field of population ageing and its consequences. Leo van Wissen was educated as a human geographer at the Free University in Amsterdam (MSc and PhD). Leo has been a guest researcher at the University of California at Irvine and the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium. He is a member of the Academia Europaea and has been a member of review committees for both national and international scientific programs.
Thursday 10 October 2013
1:10 - 2:00pm
Room KG.07
(followed by afternoon tea in the NIDEA foyer K3.05)
Professor Philip S. Morrison, Victoria University of Wellington
Pride and the city
Abstract:
Pride in the city is simultaneously an individual, collective and institutional response to features of urban life that raise the self-esteem of residents and may stimulate community support in favour of local investment. Local politicians exhort pride in the city by promoting inter-city competition, investors use urban pride as evidence of collective demand for local real estate, while urban planners see it as one of the returns to strategic planning. Despite the role that pride in the city plays in everyday urban discourse we know little about this subjective phenomena. How much do levels of pride vary from one city to another? Who exhibits pride in their city? What features of cities generate pride (and in whom)? On each of these questions the literature on both urbanism and subjective wellbeing remain remarkably silent. Research in the laboratory, the workplace, sport and in war all attest to the powerful role which personal pride can play in economic and social decision making. This study extends the notion of pride beyond the self to the city, to pride in one’s city as opposed to pride in one’s self. The two are related but we are not sure how. I apply a multilevel model to a large 2010 sample of residents in 12 cities in New Zealand and consider the degree to which average levels of urban pride vary across cities, controlling for respondent characteristics such as gender, age, ethnicity, birthplace as well as levels of financial need. Evidence for the compensatory nature of pride in the external found in studies of nationalism and sports team affiliation also apply to the urban. The characteristics of the city matter as do the characteristics of individual residents. In addition however there are interaction effects which suggest that urban pride can be amplified or diminished depending on exactly who lives where and under what circumstances. Some implications for community building and local urban policy are raised.
Speaker's Bio:
Philip Morrison is Professor of Human Geography in the School of Geography, Environment and Earth Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington where he teaches urban and population geography. Philip is an economic geographer and completed his PhD on housing markets under a Commonwealth Scholarship at the University of Toronto. Before his appointment at Victoria University of Wellington Philip held research positions at the Centre for Urban and Community Studies, University of Toronto, and the Department of Regional Science, University of Pennsylvania. He was awarded the first Hodge Fellowship by the Social Science Research Fund Committee in 1985 to study local labour markets and a Henry Lang Fellowship in 2002 by the Institute of Policy Studies to explore relationships between geography and social policy. His present research focuses on wellbeing and his study of urban pride is an extension of that project. Philip has been an Urban Studies Fellow at the Centre for Urban Studies, University of Glasgow and Visiting Fellow at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, as well as a number of Australian universities. More recently he has worked with Statistics New Zealand on studies of motivations for internal migration in collaboration with the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a member of the Regional Science Association International and currently serves as the New Zealand ambassador for the Regional Studies Association. He has most recently been recognized as the 2013 ‘Distinguished New Zealand Geographer’ by the New Zealand Geographical Society for outstanding and sustained contributions to New Zealand geography.
Thursday 5 September 2013
1:10 - 2:00pm
Room I2.22
(followed by afternoon tea in the NIDEA foyer K3.05)
Dr Catherine Ris, University of New Caledonia
Exploring differences in employment outcomes between Kanak and other New Caledonians: How important is the role of school achievement?
Abstract:
New Caledonia, the largest French Territory in the South Pacific, enjoys a high level of standard of living but is marked by huge social inequalities as a result of geographic and ethnic origin. This study highlights the differences in school achievement and labour market outcomes between Kanak (indigenous people) and non-Kanak. Using data from the four most recent censuses (1989, 1996, 2004 and 2009), we show that though dramatic progress has been made in the area of school achievement, employment rates still differ widely across ethnic groups. We decompose the gap in labour market attachment between Kanak and non-Kanak using the Blinder–Oaxaca decomposition for non-linear regression models. The decomposition shows that at least three-quarters of the gap can be attributed to differences in observed characteristics between Kanak and non-Kanak women. For men, the differences in observed characteristics of the two populations account for 55 per cent of the gap.
Speaker's Bio:
Catherine Ris is Assistant Professor of Economics in the Department of Law, Economics and Management at the University of New Caledonia. She received her PhD in 2001 from the University of Lyon and was a post-doctoral fellow at the Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA) at Maastricht University. She is currently a Visiting Researcher at the Centre for Development Studies at the University of Auckland. Her main research interests are in development, labour economics and education economics. She has participated in several European and Pacific research networks including Targeted Socio-Economic Research, Transitions in Youth and Oceania Development.
Thursday 1 August 2013
1:10 - 2:00pm
Room SG.03
(followed by afternoon tea in the NIDEA foyer K3.05)
Assistant Professor Victor Thompson, Rider University
Professor Lawrence D. Bobo, Harvard University
Mass incarceration, friends and family: How mass incarceration disproportionately affects blacks and whites in their exposure to the criminal justice system.
Abstract:
In this paper, we explore the extent to which mass incarceration impacts African Americans and whites differently and ask whether or not context matters differently for African Americans and whites in determining how likely one is to have a close friend or relative incarcerated. We explore the differential effects of metropolitan statistical area (PMSA) level indicators of well-being (% unemployed by race, median income, female headed households, % in poverty, % female headed households) on the likelihood of having a close friend or relative incarcerated for African Americans and whites. Using multilevel models, we find different effects of PMSA-level indicators for African American and whites for the likelihood of having a friend or relative incarcerated. African Americans at all levels are more likely to be exposed to the criminal justice system and have a friend or relative incarcerated, all else equal. This has serious implications for how we approach the problem of mass incarceration. “Moving up” (i.e. living in a better PMSA) helps whites and limits their exposure to the CJS, but “moving up” has limited effects for African Americans. These findings suggest that the effects of the massive incarceration of African American males in the United States extends well beyond the confines of the ghettoized, urban underclass and in to middle class African American lives.
Speaker's Bio:
Dr Thompson (Ph.D., Stanford University) received his Ph.D. in sociology in 2010 from Stanford University. While at Stanford, he was a Fellow at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity from 2005-2007 and taught courses on race and ethnicity, political sociology, and urban sociology. He has published articles on race and crime in addition to articles on global ethnic enumeration practices and is currently working on two projects. The first is a project on race, crime, and public opinion which explores the relationship between racial attitudes and beliefs about criminality in America. His second project is a longitudinal study of racial and ethnic enumeration practices on censuses and population registers around the world from 1970-2010. He teaches classes on research methods, race and ethnicity, and race and crime at Rider University in Lawrenceville, NJ.
Thursday 4 July 2013
1:10 - 2:00pm
Room KG.01
(followed by afternoon tea at NIDEA - K3.05)
Professor Richard Bedford, QSO, FRSNZ
Seasonal labour migration schemes and the provision of employment for Pacific Islanders in Australia and New Zealand: band-aid or sustainable contribution to development?
Abstract:
It has been suggested that the seasonal work programmes New Zealand and Australia have introduced since 2007 can provide nothing more than band-aids in the provision of wage-earning employment opportunities for the burgeoning labour forces of participating Pacific countries. Given the small numbers involved in the schemes (7,500 in New Zealand and around 1,400 in Australia in 2013) in relation to the labour forces of the countries concerned (PNG, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Nauru, Kiribati, Tuvalu, Samoa and Tonga) this is a fair comment at the level of simple numbers recruited. But is there a wider set of benefits accruing to families and communities in the countries supplying the workers that provide the basis for a more sustainable contribution by seasonal employment overseas to development in the islands? Are there also potential spin-offs for participants in the schemes that could provide for other opportunities for mobility linked with work overseas longer term – opportunities that may contribute to addressing on-going challenges associated with global warming, especially in low-lying islands in the central Pacific? Drawing on findings from five years of monitoring the performance of New Zealand’s Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) work policy, this paper argues that the contributions and potential benefits of well-managed seasonal work programmes are much greater than suggested by the simple numbers of workers employed – the band-aid dimension to resolving significant employment issues in the islands.
Speaker's Bio:
Professor Richard Bedford QSO, FRSNZ is Professor of Population Geography in the National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis (NIDEA) at the University of Waikato and Pro Vice-Chancellor Research at Auckland University of Technology. He is a specialist in migration research and since the mid-1960s he has been researching processes of population movement in the Asia-Pacific region. He is currently working on implications for New Zealand and Australia of population developments and migration trends in the Pacific over the next 30-40 years, including the impact of climate change on migration.
Thursday 6 June 2013
1:10 - 2:00pm
Room I1.01
(followed by afternoon tea at NIDEA - K3.05)
Dr David C Maré
The incidence and persistence of cyclical job loss in New Zealand
Abstract:
In New Zealand, the impact of the 2007-08 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) was milder than in most other developed countries, though still substantial. Employment declined by 2.5 percent between the fourth quarter of 2008 and the fourth quarter of 2009. There were pronounced declines in job and worker turnover rates, signalling a decline in labour market liquidity and employment difficulties for new entrants and high turnover groups of workers (Fabling and Maré, 2012). This presentation is based on a paper (jointly written with Dr Richard Fabling) which documents the extent and composition of employment change between 2000 and 2011, focusing particularly on the 2008-2010 period, when the labour market impacts of the GFC were strongest. As in previous downturns, the incidence of cyclical job loss and unemployment has fallen disproportionately on young, unskilled, and temporary workers. The paper identifies, for subgroups of workers identified by age, gender and earnings level, the sensitivity of employment growth and labour market flows to aggregate employment fluctuations. The paper also focuses on relative fluctuations across industries, and local labour market areas. We identify whether the uneven incidence of cyclical job loss reflects the exposure of workers to different sets of industry or local employment growth, or the differing cyclical sensitivity of different groups to common shocks. Finally, we trace outcomes for workers whose jobs end: summarising their duration out of work, and the wage increases or reductions they experience when they subsequently secure employment.
Speaker's Bio:
Dr David C. Maré is an Adjunct Professor of Economics at the University of Waikato and an affiliate of the National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis. Dave is also a Senior Fellow at Motu Economic and Public Policy Research in Wellington. He has been at Motu since 2000. Prior to that, he was a researcher at the New Zealand Department of Labour. Dave gained his PhD in Economics at Harvard University in 1995, specialising in labour economics and urban economics. Dave’s research interests are in the areas of empirical spatial and labour economics, focusing on issues of migration, labour market dynamics, the evaluation of labour market policies, and the economic performance of cities.
Thursday 9 May 2013
1:10 - 2:00pm
Room KG.09
Professor Ian Pool CNZM
New Zealand’s Version of Australia’s History Wars: 19th Century Contact, Colonisation, Maori Population and Development
Abstract:
Not to be outdone by Australia’s revisionist histories, New Zealand has recently seen an eruption of studies that attempt to overthrow conventional historical wisdom about Maori. In both countries, these revisionist histories have been co-opted by conservative commentators about race relations and are often given a high profile. But that said, the New Zealand version of Australia’s History Wars deviates from its ANZAC cousin’s. In Australia, the revisionist histories fed into high level political debates about the Mabo decision, reconciliation especially apologies to Aborigines, the ethnic cleansing in Tasmania and violence between Aborigines and Whites (they claim it was mainly in response to Aborigines attacking Whites). New Zealand revisionism, which is more ‘tabloid history’, focuses on core demographic issues: that high mortality and Maori population decline, c1810-c1895, were due to their own ‘savagery’, not introduced disease, and that Maori benefited from annexation allowing ‘mass inflows’ of settlers, bringing peace, technology, wealth and wellbeing to Maori. The revisionist studies highlight numerous pathological behaviours -- infanticide, drunkenness, cannibalism, suicide, plus the inter-tribal Musket Wars (1810-1840). There is seldom any attempt to estimate prevalence. The most widely accepted estimate of deaths directly attributable to the Musket Wars is often used as if it were an annual figure, not mortality over many years. Most revisionists use two information sources. First, 19th century writings on Maori by voyagers, missionaries and others, used without making critical analyses, which must not only be textual but must also cover the context of Victorian thought and myths surrounding the civilising mission of empires. Secondly, they turn to census data available nationally from the 1857/58 census by Fenton, to that of 1901, typically to highlight high masculinity ratios as evidence of female infanticide or the ‘drudgery’ imposed on Maori women – they do not analyse these by referring to epidemiological research on sex differential in mortality, nor on the anthropological literature on Maori gender issues.
Speaker's Bio:
(David) lan POOL, MA (NZ, 1960, Auckland University College) PhD (Australian National University, 1965) was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand in 1994. He is an Emeritus Professor, University of Waikato; Associe de Recherche, CEPED, Université, Paris (Descartes) and Honorary Professor, Jinjiang College, Sichuan University, China. With Prof Yve Charbit, Université Paris, he is Editor-in-Chief for a new book series to be published by Springer, Demographic Transformation and Socio-Economic Development. A member of the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population (IUSSP) and of the Population Association of America since 1965, he was Elected to IUSSP's Nominating Committee, 1987-1991, and Appointed to the IUSSP's Scientific Committee on Age Structure and Policy, 1997-2001. He was elected to the Academy Council, Royal Society of New Zealand (1996-2001) and was a James Cook Fellow. He delivered the Borrie Lecture of the Australian Population Association in Adelaide in 2006. In 2007 he was Invited Speaker at the United Nations Population Fund in New York in 2007 and was also elected a Life Member of the NZ Population Association. He won the Te Rangi Hiroa (Sir Peter Buck) Medal, Royal Society of New Zealand (2009). lan Pool has published 6 books, 16 scientific monographs, 139 scientific articles/chapters in scientific books, 27 discussion papers, plus 24 reports. Ian Pool was awarded CNZM for ‘services to demography’.
Thursday 4 April 2013
1:10 - 2:00pm
Room AG.11
Dr Yaghoob Foroutan
Demography of the Middle East: Window of Opportunities or Challenges?
Abstract:
Using a demographic approach, this seminar focuses on the region of the Middle East (ME). The region operates as a human and social laboratory to examine the widely-used term 'Demographic Window of Opportunities' which is also termed as 'Demographic Gift', 'Demographic Bonus' and 'Demographic Dividend'. The terms refer to the situation of a population for which the ratio of people in working ages (15-64) to those in non-working ages (under 15 and older than 65), so-called the 'age-dependency ratio', is substantially greater. This higher proportion of the working-ages population, in theory, provides an opportunity for economic growth. The global phenomenon of fertility decline accounts for the most important cause of this demographic situation. This also applies to the ME region. Further, as most countries of the ME region have witnessed the fertility decline in recent decades, the excess of the working age groups to non-working age groups is profoundly more visible in 'the youth bulge' which, according to the UN's definition, refers to people aged 15 to 24 years. These are the ages of enthusiasm, dreams, and ambitions on the one hand, and a wide range of needs and requirements (education, marriage, employment etc.) on the other hand. This seminar highlights the main demographic characteristics of the ME region and addresses the opportunities and challenges provided by these „revolutionary‟ demographic changes. It also discusses whether and how closely these demographic changes and consequences are associated with a wider spectrum including social, cultural, political and economic dimensions in the region.
Speaker's Bio:
Dr Yaghoob (Yaqub) Foroutan recently completed his position as Inaugural Post-Doctoral Fellow at the National Institute of Demographic and Economic Analysis (NIDEA), The University of Waikato in New Zealand (2010-2013) where he now holds a position as Research Associate. Dr Foroutan is also Assistant Professor at The University of Mazandaran in Iran. He is also Adjunct Research Fellow at The Swinburne Institute for Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia. Dr Foroutan completed PhD in the Demography & Sociology Program at the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, Australia. His doctoral research examining demographic dimensions and determinants of women‟s market employment with specific focus on the effects of migration, ethnicity and religion (particularly, Muslim immigrants) won The W. D. Borrie Essay Prize awarded by the Australian Population Association. Dr Foroutan has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals including Journal of Population Research, International Migration Review, New Zealand Sociology, Immigrants & Minorities, Current Sociology, South Asia Research, Asian Journal of Women’s Studies, Australian Religion Studies Review, Fieldwork in Religion, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs. He also wrote a chapter on the association between gender and religion in the book The World’s Religions: Continuities and Transformations published by Routledge in 2009. His most recent publications include a chapter (“Content Analysis of Religious Education in the Islamic Republic of Iran”) in the book Society, the State and Religious Education Politics (Ergon Publishing House, Würzburg, Germany, 2013(, and an article titled 'Social Change and Demographic Response in Iran (1956-2006)" in British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies (2013, forthcoming). Dr Foroutan also serves regularly as referee to review articles for a wide range of international and academic journals related to his fields and research interests: migration and ethnicity, gender, culture and religion from a sociological and demographic perspective.
Thursday 21 March 2013
1:10 - 2:00pm
Room AG.30
(Followed by afternoon tea at NIDEA in K3.05)
Professor Steven Stillman
(Department Economics, University of Otago)
Does Changing the Legal Drinking Age Influence Youth Behaviours?
Abstract:
This paper, joint research with Stefan Boes of the University of Luzern, examines the impact of a reduction in the legal drinking age in New Zealand from 20 to 18 on alcohol use, alcohol related hospitalisations and alcohol related car accidents for both individuals directly affected by the change and for those who were unaffected but whose access to alcohol might have changed (e.g. slightly younger individuals). We take two empirical approaches to estimating the impact of the law change on teenage behaviours. First, we examine the impact on alcohol consumption by estimating a difference-in-differences regression model using data multiple waves of a nationally representative health survey, with individuals aged 20-23 used as the control group against which effects on 15-17 and 18-19 year-olds are measured. Second, since the legal drinking age was reduced from 20 to 18 at a particular date (December 1, 1999), and this change took effect immediately, we use a regression discontinuity design (RDD) to examine the impact of the law change on alcohol related hospitalisations and road accidents measured in administrative data. By using two empirical approaches and complementary data, we are able to examine whether the change in drinking age led to changes in alcohol consumption on the extensive and intensive margins and the public health costs associated with these changes. Our main findings are that lowering the legal drinking age in New Zealand from 20 to 18 did not appear to have led to, on average, an increase in alcohol consumption, binge drinking or smoking among 15-17 or 18-19 year-olds. If anything, we find evidence of a move towards more responsible drinking behaviours, i.e. less binge drinking and fewer drinks per occasion. However, there is evidence that the law change led to a significant increase in alcohol related hospital admission rates for 18-19 year-olds, as well as for 15-17 year-olds. These increases are large in relative magnitude but small in the absolute number of affected teenagers. Finally, we find no evidence for an increase in alcohol related road accidents at the time of the law change for teenagers relative to slightly older drivers.
Speaker's Bio:
Steven Stillman received a PhD in Economics from the University of Washington in 2000. He joined the University of Otago as a professor in the Department of Economics in July 2011. Prior to this, he was a senior fellow at Motu Economic and Public Policy Research from 2004 to 2011, a senior research economist at the New Zealand Department of Labour from 2002 to 2004 and a postdoctoral fellow at the RAND Corporation from 2000 to 2002. He is an affiliated researcher at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn, the Centre for Research and Analysis of Migration (CReAM) in London, New Zealand’s National Institute for Demographic and Economic Analysis (NIDEA), Motu Economic and Public Policy Research in Wellington, the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research and the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan. Steve's research focuses on empirical labour economics, specialising in the behaviour of individuals and households. In recent research, he has examined the drivers of immigration between Australia and New Zealand, the impact of migration to New Zealand on the income and health of Pacific Islanders both in New Zealand and in the Pacific, retirement behaviour among older Australians, and the effect of economic shocks in Russia on nutrition and overall living standards. Steve is broadly interested in research on migration, health, nutrition, education, household decision-making and inequality.
Thursday 7 February 2013
1:10 - 2:00pm
Room KG.01
Hans Elshof
(PhD Candidate University of Groningen and the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, The Hague)
Who leaves and who stays behind? An analysis of migration behaviour in rural settlements in North-Netherlands facing population decline
Abstract:
Many settlements in the more remote parts of North-Netherlands are facing population decline. The main causes of this trend are a lack of opportunities for education and training, and a lack of jobs in these areas. Because of these causes it is often assumed that negative ‘sorting’ occurs in these settlements: upwardly mobile people leave, while underprivileged people stay behind. In terms of the liveability and resilience, such a development could have detrimental effects on these settlements. This research therefore aims to answer the question whether out-migration from settlements can be explained by occupational status. To answer this question a multinomial logistic regression analysis of population register data for North-Netherlands will be performed. Underprivileged people are defined as those people who are of working age, but depend on social security. The hypothesis to be tested is whether the occupational positions of out-migrants and non-migrants differ between settlements with different levels of population growth.
Speaker's Bio:
Hans Elshof comes from The Netherlands. He is currently employed as a PhD student at the University of Groningen and the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, The Hague, and supervised by Prof. Dr. Leo van Wissen and Prof. Dr. Clara Mulder. For the last two years Hans has been working on demographic change in the rural areas of North-Netherlands. Although the concept of a rural area means in The Netherlands something quite different from what it means in New Zealand, many places in North Netherlands are seeing a decline of their populations, with the issue being more severe in some than in others. The research of Hans Elshof focuses largely on the social side of population decline in villages and towns, and the differences between villages and towns. Specifically, Hans would like to know if population decline, and the side effects of it, have an impact on the social cohesion of such places and, consequently, on the social capital of people living there. During his PhD project Hans uses quantitative as well as qualitative methods to get to the bottom of the questions related to this topic.