Katherine J. Curtis

About

Dr. Katherine J. Curtis is Professor of Community & Environmental Sociology and Associate Director of the Center for Demography and Ecology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Her work is centered in demography and extends to spatial, environmental, rural, and applied demography, and focuses on two central themes: population-environment interactions, most centrally the relationship between demographic, economic, and environmental forces; and spatial and temporal dimensions of social and economic inequality, most centrally historical and local forces perpetuating racial disparities. In her work, Curtis adopts place-based theoretical frameworks and employs advanced spatial and spatio-temporal statistical approaches to analyze questions about inequality, which has profound and far-reaching impacts on population wellbeing. Currently funded projects focus on spatial differentiation in migration and fertility responses to environmental events (NICHD and NSF), later life health impacts of early childhood environmental conditions (NIA), age- and race-specific net migration (NICHD), and natural resource competition and rural livelihoods (USDA).

CDE research theme area affiliations

Demography of Inequality; Spatial and Environmental Demography

Selected Publications

Curtis, Katherine, Lee, Junho, O’Connell, Heather, Zhu, Jun. “The Spatial Distribution of Poverty and the Long Reach of the Industrial Makeup of Places: New Evidence on Spatial and Temporal Regimes.” Rural Sociology  (2018): online first. NIHMS ID 938183.

Curtis, Katherine. “U.S. Return Migration and the Decline in Southern Black Disadvantage, 1970-2000*.” Social Science Quarterly  (2018). NIHMS ID 983668.

Johnson, Kenneth, Katherine Curtis, and David Egan-Robertson. “Frozen in Place: Net Migration in Sub-National Areas of the United States in the Era of the Great Recession.” Population and Development Review 43, no. 4 (2017): 599-623. NIHMS ID 984709.

Curtis, Katherine, and Heather O’Connell. “Historical Racial Contexts and Contemporary Spatial Differences in Racial Inequality.” Spatial Demography 5, no. 2 (2017): 73-97. PubMed Central ID 5935123.

Slez, Adam, Heather O’Connell, and Katherine Curtis. “A Note on the Identification of Common Geographies.” Sociological Methods & Research 46, no. 2 (2017): 288-99. NIHMS ID 983658.

DeWaard, Jack, Katherine Curtis, and Glenn Fuguitt. “The ‘New Great Migration’ of Blacks to the Us South: Estimating Duration of Residence in the Absence of Retrospective Information.” Demographic Research 34 (2016): 885-98. NIHMS ID 983662.

DeWaard, Jack, Katherine Curtis, and Elizabeth Fussell. “Population Recovery in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: Exploring the Potential Role of Stage Migration in Migration Systems.” Population and Environment 37, no. 4 (2016): 449-63. PubMed Central ID 4942146.

Curtis, Katherine, Elizabeth Fussell, and Jack DeWaard. “Recovery Migration after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: Spatial Concentration and Intensification in the Migration System.” Demography 52, no. 4 (2015): 1269-93. PubMed Central ID 4534346.

Fussell, Elizabeth, Katherine Curtis, and Jack DeWaard. “Recovery Migration to the City of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina: A Migration Systems Approach.” Population and Environment 35, no. 3 (2014): 305-32. PubMed Central ID PMC3979579.