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Casterline Re-Appointed IPR Director

January 16, 2013

Casterline Re-Appointed IPR Director

Joseph E. Steinmetz, executive dean and vice provost, and Gifford Weary, divisional dean, social and behavioral sciences, College of Arts and Sciences, announced today the re-appointment of John Casterline, professor of sociology, as director of the Institute for Population Research (IPR), effective July 1. Casterline’s term will run from July 1, 2013 to August 31, 2017.

The IPR is a nationally recognized multidisciplinary research center with signature strengths in the study of family demography, population health, immigration and integration, with behavioral and health scientists/affiliates from eight colleges and 17 departments across the university. The institute was established in 2000 as the Initiative in Population Research and, in 2012, the Ohio State Faculty Senate approved IPR’s proposal to become a university center and to rename it the Institute for Population Research. A member of the Association of Population Centers, IPR is the centerpiece of Ohio State’s Population and Health Targeted Investments in Excellence (TIE).

Casterline has served as director of IPR since 2009 and was instrumental in securing a highly-competitive five-year $2.2 million national center award from the National Institutes of Health.

During a three-decade research career, Casterline has investigated the causes and consequences of fertility decline in developing countries. Relying primarily on survey data (some of it national, some localized), Casterline directed multi-country, multi-year projects on social diffusion models of fertility change, on unmet need for family planning, and on unwanted fertility.

In the mid-1990s, Casterline began collaborative research on demographic change in the Arab region that has continued to the present, and during the same period he has examined fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa, the last remaining high-fertility region on the globe.

Casterline’s current research focuses on fertility theory and methods, demographic transition in low-income societies, demography of sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab region, and social networks and demographic processes.