Demography MA

About this programme

The Department of Demography offers an interdisciplinary training program leading to the MA and PhD in Demography. Demography is the systematic study of human populations, a topic central to many pressing policy issues such as the economic development of Third World countries; population aging; the environment; health and mortality; family and household change; immigration; and ethnicity. Demography also has strong intellectual and institutional ties to other fields such as sociology, economics, social history, anthropology, biology, public health, and statistics. The program at UC Berkeley is one of the few in the United States granting graduate degrees in demography, rather than offering demography only as a field of specialization within some other department. This training strategy permits greater concentration and depth in demography, as well as program flexibility and breadth in related subjects. The program stresses both quantitative aspects of demography and demography in the context of social science theory. The master's degree in demography is designed both as a final degree for those who wish to pursue a professional career at that level of training and as a second degree for students earning a doctorate in demography or a related discipline. The basic coursework for the master's program is required for the doctoral degree as well.