Ph.D. Population Studies

The Office of Population Research (OPR), founded in 1936, is the demographic research and graduate training center at Princeton University. The field encompasses a wide range of specializations that span substantive and methodological subjects in the social, mathematical, and biological sciences. Building on its historical strengths in signature fields such as demographic methods, fertility, health and mortality, OPR researchers have embraced fields that are currently prominent in population studies, such as international migration and development, children, youth and families, as well as various aspects of social and economic inequality. In addition, OPR researchers are involved in new fields of inquiry such as epigenetics, biodemography, social epidemiology, and web-based experimentation.

The graduate training program in population studies offers four types of certification. First, the Program in Population Studies (PIPS) offers a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree in demography that is designed for students who wish to specialize in the core substantive topics and technical methods.

Second, students may obtain a joint degree in Demography and Social Policy via a collaborative training program through the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.  The Joint Degree Program (JDP) in Social Policy includes the Departments of Politics, Psychology, and Sociology in addition to PIPS. Students interested in the joint degree in Demography and Social Policy have the option of applying to be admitted to the joint degree program either at the time of their initial application to the Graduate School or after their first or second year of graduate study with the permission of the director of graduate studies for the Program in Population Studies.
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Third, the program offers a general examination in demography that is accepted by the Department of Sociology as partial fulfillment of their degree requirements