Overview
Demographer at the University of Chicago (Population Research Center) at the time of publication; later faculty at UCLA. Works on mortality, family demography, and demographic crises. Research spans comparative young adult mortality, family complexity across industrialized countries, demographic recovery in Cambodia after the Khmer Rouge, and HIV epidemic impacts on reproductive regimes in sub-Saharan Africa.
Key Contributions / Features
- International comparison of adolescent and young adult mortality (Heuveline 2002): Author of a 26-country, 1950–1996 WHO Mortality Database study documenting that violent causes (suicide, homicide, motor vehicle injury) rose from 26% to 43% of young adult deaths at ages 15–34 as overall mortality declined. Applied PCA to the full age-sex-cause matrix and identified the United States as a clear outlier on both violent mortality level and homicide loading. Documented that Catholic suicide underreporting is a Latin American but not European Catholic artifact. Showed the male/female suicide sex ratio rose substantially (2.0→3.8) while the motor vehicle sex ratio fell. See Young Adult Mortality Hump and Sociology of Suicide.
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