Penn State Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Demography Jennifer Van Hook has been elected president of the Population Association of America (PAA).
Van Hook will serve as president-elect in 2027, president in 2028 and past president in 2029 of the 96-year-old professional organization, which is dedicated to promoting and supporting high-quality population research. Its 3,000 members include demographers, sociologists, economists, public health professionals and others with an interest in the field.
She’s the first Penn State faculty member to serve as PAA president.
A PAA member since 1991, Van Hook said she’s never missed a meeting.
“This is a big honor for me,” she said. “The PAA has been my professional home for my entire career. I owe a lot to PAA and am happy to give back to the organization as president.”
As president, Van Hook will oversee PAA’s membership and board meetings, complete formal agreements, deliver its annual report, fill committee vacancies, organize the group’s 2028 annual meeting and give the presidential address at its 2029 meeting. She said she also plans to work to protect data infrastructure in population science.
“Part of this will involve articulating the value of data to our government representatives and raising public appreciation of what social science data reveals about us and our communities,” Van Hook said.
Van Hook will also work to maintain the membership and financial health of PAA.
“A crucial part of this work will involve enhancing the networking and professional opportunities for early-career scholars, students and postdocs at the meetings, expanding opportunities for new generations to get involved in the leadership of the organization and maintaining strong connections with our international colleagues,” she said.
Van Hook’s research focuses on immigration and the integration of immigrants and their children into American society. She’s now working on research that estimates the size and characteristics of the unauthorized foreign-born population and the consequences of having a non-permanent residency status for immigrants' health and wellbeing. She’s been published widely and has received extensive funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the U.S. National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation.
On two separate occasions, she served on a National Academies of Sciences panel on the Survey of Income and Program Participation, and currently is a member of the advisory boards for the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Data Sharing for Demographic Research and IPUMS-DHS. In addition, she has frequently collaborated with the Population Estimates Branch of the U.S. Census Bureau and served as an expert witness on a court case involving the introduction of a citizenship question on the 2020 U.S. Census.
Since arriving at Penn State in 2007, Van Hook has served in several leadership roles, including director of the Population Research Institute in the University’s Social Science Research Institute (SSRI). In her current role as director of SSRI’s Data Resources Hub, she helps researchers access data “in pursuit of innovative social science.”
Through the years, Van Hook has mentored numerous early-career scholars in her duties as co-director of Penn State’s NIH-funded T32 program in population health and co-director of the Summer Institute for Migration Research Methods.
“These experiences have paid dividends as I watch former mentees advance in their careers,” she said.
Before being elected president, Van Hook previously served in several leadership roles with PAA, including as a member of its board of directors and awards committee from 2010 to 2013, and as co-editor of its bimonthly journal, Demography, from 2015 to 2017. She also served as treasurer of the Association for Population Centers from 2014 to 2016 and vice president from 2021 to 2022.
For Van Hook, serving as president of PAA is a terrific way to pay back an organization that has given her much in return.
“The PAA has been crucial to my training and career advancement during my earlier career, and it has helped me build and maintain my professional network over the years,” Van Hook said. “PAA also helps amplify our individual voices to advocate more powerfully for essential public data and funding for the advancement of population science. I remain wholly committed to the organization and will take my role as a steward seriously so that the PAA can continue its mission going forward.”