Jason Fletcher

My quote of the day

My dad used to say: “Don't tell me what you value. Show me your budget, and I'll tell you what you value."

Joseph R. Biden, Jr.

This whole thread is great, but I particularly appreciate this idea of a “ladder” of research questions implied by a broader theory (and we should be very clear about which question we are attempting to answer in a given paper)

👶 Do early life conditions shape how long/well we live?
Find out w/ @Jasonmfletcher.bsky.social (UW-Madison):
🗓️ 27 May | 🕑 2–3:30pm | @nuffieldcollege.bsky.social Oxford
👉https://www.demography.ox.ac.uk/news/jason-fletcher-gives-lcds-seminar-moving-forward-looking-back-new-evidence-early-life-shapes

Opinion | My Farewell Column I’ve sought to address what people believe but are often too afraid to say.

One rule of thumb I live by: when the ratio of “I” to “you + we”approaches infinity or is undefined, beware.

Question: “Does Schooling Improve Cognitive Abilities at Older Ages”? Vikesh Amin, @hanspkohler.bsky.social @jasonmfletcher.bsky.social et al. dig into the Harmonized Cognition Assessment Protocol of the HRS to examine education & cognitive aging. @SociologyatPenn read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...

The #PAA2025 preliminary program is online: submissions.mirasmart.com/PAA2025/Itin...

Make sure you are registered before rates increase in March: www.populationassociation.org/paa2025/reg-...

Genetic basis of partner choice https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.02.03.636375v1

We are delighted to announce our next brownbag seminar is Feb 19, 12pm, w/ Jason Fletcher (@jasonmfletcher.bsky.social), who will present on "Moving forward by looking back: New evidence that early life shapes our lifespan.” 310 Social Sciences & zoom. Do join us!

Christopher Jencks Christopher Sandy Jencks is the Malcolm Wiener Professor of Social Policy. He has taught at Harvard, Northwestern, the University of Chicago, and the University of California, Santa Barbara. Earlier, ...

Let’s celebrate a life well lived

Sandy Jencks died this weekend

He was a giant in social science

He spanned disciplines

He trained legions of researchers

He pushed us to engage with policy

He was a wonderful colleague & a lovely person

I will miss him

www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/chri...

Any type of cost that is included in the indirect cost rate calculation is disallowed as a direct cost.

If your school charges you rent on space, you cannot add this rent as a direct cost. It is assumed that the government is already reimbursing the school for this.

1. Today the NIH director issued a new directive slashing overhead rates to 15%.

I want to provide some context on what that means and why it matters.

grants.nih.gov/grants/guide...

a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on ALT: a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on

A Primer on Indirect Cost Rates

The Internet Archive has to date downloaded 500 terabytes of US government websites, which it crawls at the end of every presidential term. The whole archive is fully searchable. This effort's housed by a donation-funded nonprofit, not a branch of the US government. blog.archive.org/2024/05/08/e...

Image shows a drop down menu and search results page. It also repeats the text: Wayback Machine Collection Full Text Search Visit web.archive.org Scroll to 🔎Collection Search section Select "End Of Term (US Gov 2024)" from the menu Type in your query term and click search

How to Access the EOT Web Archives

Visit web.archive.org
Scroll to 🔎Collection Search section
Select "End Of Term (US Gov 2024)" from the menu
Type in your query term and click search

Or download bulk WARC files from eotarchive.org/data/
#EOT2024 #EOTArchive

The Advances in Social Genomics Conference Social genomics researchers from across the world convene at the University of Wisconsin–Madison each year to discuss advances in the field.

**Call for Papers**

The Advances in Social Genomics Conference Series (TAGC)
May 14-16, 2025
UW-Madison @uwmadison.bsky.social
Deadline for submissions: March 7, 2025

Funding available for presenters

Keynotes: Kelly Bakulski and Dan Belsky

isg.wisc.edu/events/the-a...

NIH appears to have canceled/postponed all of its study sections—the independent review panels that approve federal grants for health research.

Such grants fund the work/salaries of 300k people at more than 2,500 institutions

Thanks @glebeda.bsky.social for pulling this list together!

Consider this a bat signal for population health scientists everywhere... let's GOOOOO. go.bsky.app/FP7rYaJ

a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on ALT: a cartoon says hey everybody an old man 's talking while bart simpson looks on

Bluetorial-A dream and a bit of a nightmare

Serving as Editor-in-Chief at Science was fascinating. I greatly enjoyed working with talented and committed editorial, news, graphics, and production staff. But the inside look into scientific publishing and AAAS was also deeply disillusioning.

Help me get the word out, folks:

Health Economics (the journal, not the field) is now live on BlueSky. Please follow the journal's account if you're so inclined - and also repost the announcement (for the same reason). Thanks!

Icon with gears and clock faces with the text at the bottom reading "1,000+ Data Requests per Day"

DYK in 2024 we averaged over 1,000 data requests every day? That's an average 690 downloads per day (29/hr, 1 every 2 minutes) and users analyzed data with our SDA online tabulator 545 times per day (23/hr, 1 every 3 minutes). Learn more at www.ipums.org/by-the-numbers

TFW you think--it seems unlikely researchers could find effects of a state policy on a rare outcome--and then look at the figure and recall the work of @jondr44.bsky.social

Then wouldn't it also be fair to say: even with pretty massive changes in fiscal structure, the changes in mobility would be quite modest (at most) and that smaller, more likely changes in FC will have imperceptible effects on this outcome?

I thought we were past "genes for X"

"Exome sequencing identifies genes for socioeconomic status in 350,770 individuals"

www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Q on magnitude: "..we estimate that a one standard deviation increase in county-area fiscal centralization is associated with 10 percent of a standard deviation less spatial inequality..."

Is this: 1 SD in FC associated with 0.0042 change in the level of outcome? (SD of mobility is 0.04 X 0.1)?

**Professional/Personal Update**

I am happy to share that, come Fall 2025, I will be (re!) joining the Department of Economics at the University of Texas.

Hook 'em!🤘

Why economists need to review the preregistration!* This is a hot mess; hard to believe it's in the QJE datacolada.org/122

* docs.google.com/document/d/1...

Submission: Children and Families Program Meeting, Page 1 of 2 - MyNBERNBER: National Bureau of Economic Research

You can still submit for the NBER's Children & Families spring meetings on April 3-4. Submit by Jan. 31 here: conference.nber.org/confsubmit/b...

Ok, following on that last thread, here are my suggestions about how to be a good mentor (though this is still a work in progress!)

(And others should feel free to add to my list!)

A🧵

I was incredibly honored to be awarded the CSWEP Carolyn Shaw Bell Award. When I accepted the award, I talked about the importance of mentoring.

The lessons I pass on are kind of obvious. But they are important, so I am going to share them yet again. (A🧵)