Population Young Author’s Prize 2017

The jury of the second edition of the Young Author’s Prize was chaired by Jorge H. Bravo (United Nations), and was composed of Pascale Breuil (CNAV, France), Patrick Deboosere (ULB, Belgique), Michel Guillot (University of Pennsylvania, United States), and Anne Solaz (INED, France) as voting members, and Olivia Samuel (Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin, France) and Laurent Toulemon (INED, France) as non-voting members.

A word from the jury president

A total of 31 papers entered this year’s competition for the Young Author’s Prize organized by Population. Most of the texts received were considered to be of good to very good quality, and spanned a wide range of interesting topics, reflecting well on the diversity, skill and drive of young researchers around the world. Authors from four continents – Europe, Africa, Asia and Northern America – submitted a total of 22 articles in English and 9 in French. Out of the 31 articles, 30 were written by a single author, 20 by a man and 10 and by a woman. A large number of the papers focused on two broad classical areas of demography, namely fertility and migration, albeit with fresh perspectives, posing novel questions and sometimes exploiting to new data sources. Other submissions analysed factors associated to the demographic transition, mortality and the living arrangements of young people, adults and older persons, and the transition to adulthood, among other topics. The papers employed varied analytical approaches and research methods in often creative and innovative ways, drawing mostly on quantitative data. Given the large number of high-quality papers in competition, the jury's task was a difficult one, but ultimately very satisfying.

This second edition of the Young Author’s Prize was organized as follows. Out of the 31 papers received, twelve were eliminated in an initial screening because they were either outside the scope of the journal or were not considered be to of sufficiently high scientific quality. Each of the remaining 19 articles was anonymized and sent to two external reviewers. The jury members then examined all nineteen papers and the reviewers’ reports, also on a strictly anonymous basis. The winner was selected at a final meeting on 7 February 2017. As part of its work, the jury also recommended that the Editorial Board of Population invite 10 other authors to submit their paper to be considered for publication or to submit a revised version of their paper.

On behalf of the jury, I wish to congratulate the winners, Bruno Lankoande and Ali Sié, for their article entitled “Selective Adult Migration and Urban-Rural Mortality Differentials in Burkina Faso”. Bruno Lankoande is currently a PhD student at the Centre for Demographic Research of the Université catholique de Louvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium) and Ali Sié is a Clinical epidemiologist at the Centre de recherche en santé de Nouna (CRSN) in Burkina Faso. Their article examines the effects of migration between urban and rural areas on adult mortality differentials in Burkina Faso, making use of data from two demographic surveillance sites, one in a rural area and one in an urban area. The paper interestingly shows an initial positive health selection of rural-urban migrants, but their health advantage gradually disappears as duration of urban residence increases. Taken together, the findings suggest that, beyond compositional effects and the influence of the spatial context, the selectivity of rural-to-urban migrants contributes to an accentuation of the observed urban-rural differentials in health.

I hope that you will enjoy reading the article by the 2017 prize winner. In view of the success of this second Young Author competition, the Editorial Board of Population is planning the 2018 competition, the details of which will be communicated on the website of the journal (http://www.journal-population.com/young-authors-prize/).