Overview
Distinguished demographer at the University of Pennsylvania (Population Studies Center). One of the most influential figures in 20th-century formal demography, known for foundational contributions to mortality analysis, demographic methods, and the study of socioeconomic determinants of longevity. Co-author (with Heuveline and Guillot) of the standard graduate demography textbook Demography: Measuring and Modeling Population Processes (2000).
Key Contributions / Features
- Sex mortality differences and cohort smoking (Preston and Wang 2006): Demonstrated that U.S. sex mortality differences 1948–2003 organize along birth cohorts (not calendar periods), and are attributable primarily to differential cohort smoking histories. The paper provides the empirical foundation for incorporating cohort smoking as a forecasting covariate. See Period Mortality and SSA Mortality Forecasting.
- Preston curve (1975): Established the cross-national relationship between national income and life expectancy — positive but concave, with substantial upward shifts over time driven by medical technology and public health diffusion rather than income alone.
- Educational differentials in adult mortality (with Elo 1995): Early systematic analysis of widening education-mortality gaps in the U.S. using matched death certificate and census data; precursor to Waldron (2007) and Olshansky et al. (2012).
- Age misreporting effects on old-age mortality (with Elo and Stewart 1999): Documented systematic age overstatement at death for older Black Americans in death certificates, inflating apparent Black elderly mortality and distorting cause-of-death statistics for centenarians.
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