Hiram Beltrán-Sánchez

Dr. Beltrán-Sánchez’s research focuses on the demography of health and aging. He has written on health patterns and trends in low- and middle-income countries; on aging in high-income countries including issues about compression of morbidity; on the links between early life experiences and late life outcomes; as well as on biomarker data from Mexico to study physiological patterns of health and their link with sociodemographic factors. Dr. Beltrán-Sánchez is also Associate Director of the UCLA California Center for Population Research (CCPR) and co-director of the T32 training grant at CCPR.

With Prof Alberto Palloni (University of Wisconsin-Madison), and Dr. Guido Pinto Aguirre, Dr. Beltrán-Sánchez co-founded the Latin American Mortality Database, the largest data repository of mortality from 19 countries in Latin America (including data from around 1850). He has collaborated with researchers and institutions in México, Brazil, Germany, and Sweden.

He received the 2018 Early Achievement Award from the Population Association of America. This award is given biennially in even years to scholars who have made distinguished contributions to population research during the first ten years after receipt of the Ph.D.

Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA in 2015, Dr. Beltrán-Sánchez was Research Associate at the Center for Demography of Health & Aging at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was a David E. Bell Fellow at the Center for Population and Development Studies at Harvard University from 2011 to 2013 and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Southern California from 2009-2011.

Dr. Beltrán-Sánchez has published in various journals including: the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS); Nature; Health Affairs; the American Journal of Public Health; the Journal of the American College of Cardiology; Demography; American Journal of Epidemiology; Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health; Salud Pública de México; the Journals of Gerontology (both, Social and Medical sciences); the Journal of Aging and Health; Theoretical Population Biology; among others.

Areas of Interest

• Demography of health and aging, with particular focus on Latin American countries
• Biodemographic patterns of health in adult populations
• Development and application of demographic methods to investigate health inequalities using macro and micro data
• Demographic and statistical methods with particular emphasis on mortality models

Selected Publications

Prof Beltrán-Sánchez has published over 70 papers in peer-review journals. For a full list of publications click here

• Beltrán-Sánchez, H. Palloni, A., Huangfu, Y., and McEniry. M., “Modeling biological age and its link with the aging process.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences PNAS-Nexus.
• Beltrán-Sánchez, H., Crimmins, E.M, and Finch, C.E. “The 20th Century Surge
  of Excess Adult Male Mortality.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
• Beltrán-Sánchez, H., Palloni, A., Huangfu, Y., and McEniry. M. “Population-level
  Impact of Adverse Early Life Conditions on Adult Trajectories of Morbidity, Disability and Mortality for Low- and Middle-income Countries.” Population Studies.
• Beltrán-Sánchez, H., Goldman, N., Pebley, A. and Flores Morales, J. “Calloused
  Hands, Shorter Life? Occupation and Older Age Survival in Mexico.” Demographic Research, 42(32): 875-900.
• Palloni, A., Beltrán-Sánchez, H. and Pinto, G., “Estimation of Older Adult Mortality
  from Information Distorted by Systematic Age Misreporting.” Population Studies
• Palloni, A. and Beltrán-Sánchez, H. “Discrete Barker Frailty and Warped Mortality Dynamics at Older Ages” Demography 54(2):655–671
• Palloni, A., Beltrán-Sánchez, H., and Pinto, G. "Uncertainty of Mortality Estimates and Hypotheses Testing: The Case of Latin America and Caribbean: 1850-2010." Poblacion-CEPAL XLIV(104): 13-32.
• Fernandez O. and Beltrán-Sánchez, H.. “Life span inequality as a function of the
  moments of the deaths distribution: connections and insights.” PLOS ONE