The Center for Population Economics (CPE) specializes in the development of longitudinal life-cycle and historical environmental data sets to study economic, demographic, and epidemiological processes. These include trends in chronic disease, mortality, and labor force participation, as well as the relationship between early-life disease and environmental conditions and later-life disease and mortality. CPE data resources are used to study life-cycle and intergenerational factors in the secular decline in morbidity and mortality, improvements in the standard of living over time, changing patterns in geographic mobility, and changing patterns in the intergenerational transmission of wealth. The CPE places emphasis on making its resources useful to investigators from disciplines such as microeconomics, economic history, political science, sociology, psychology, and demography, among others. Finally, it develops digital and other tools to facilitate the retrieval of data from archival sources, and to clean and manipulate the data for analyses. All data are free and available to the public at www.cpe.uchicago.edu

Current major research projects of the Center include:

1. Early Indicators of Later Work Levels, Disease, and Death (NIH P01 AG10120) and changing trends in aging since the mid-19th century;
   
   
2. The interaction of ecological quality (as measured by socioeconomic and demographic, public health and vital statistics, infrastructural, and geographic, climatological, and topographic indicators) and individual health outcomes at later ages;
   
   
3. Causal factors of declining disparities in health and aging trajectories;
   
   
4. Factors contributing to extreme longevity;
   
   
5. Life cycle and intergenerational analyses of changes in the distribution of wealth and economic mobility;
   
   
6. Long-term changes in patterns and determinants of internal migration.