Toronto Population Network Speaker Series: Jenna Nobles

POP in for an excellent presentation! The Toronto Population Network Speaker Series brings together leading scholars working at the cutting edge of population research. From mortality and health to migration, fertility, and inequality, our speakers showcase innovative methods and substantive findings shaping contemporary population research. Open to students, faculty, and anyone with an interest in data and population dynamics, this series is a space to learn, ask questions, and connect across disciplines.

Wildfire Exposure Shapes Prenatal Scarring and Selection

We examine the intergenerational effects of wildfire exposure by estimating the impact of air quality reductions on pregnancy and infant outcomes. We consider that environmental factors shape cohort health outcomes in two potentially competing ways: by shaping the health of surviving pregnancies and by shaping which pregnancies are achieved and survive to become live births. We build georeferenced data on pregnancy outcomes with restricted vital statistics records, menstrual and pregnancy tracking "app" data, satellite data, and environmental data. We use spatially-referenced fixed effect specifications to demonstrate that fires causally reduce air quality in downwind communities, in comparison to those same communities prior to fire initiation, and in comparison to changes in air pollution in other communities that are not downwind. Using similar specifications, we show that upwind fires reduce conceptions, increase the risk of pregnancy loss, and among surviving pregnancies, increase preterm birth. We use simulations to estimate how much larger effects on infant health can be when prenatal selection is incorporated. The findings reveal the substantial, cross-generational reach of fire pollution. They also introduce pregnancy success as a relevant outcome in an era of increasing wildfire severity-subfecundity, miscarriage, and stillbirth have real costs for couples, and are sensitive to environmental conditions. By integrating data on early pregnancy, the study is among the first to empirically demonstrate the joint processes of scarring and selection that shape cohort health, even before birth.

Jenna Nobles

Jenna Nobles is a Professor of Demography at University of California, Berkeley. She studies the implications of migration systems for sending and receiving communities, the causes and consequences of population variation in fertility and fecundity, and the effects of environmental change on population processes.