New Book

As the World Ages: Rethinking a Demographic Crisis

Prof. Kavita Sivaramakrishnan’s new book, As the World Ages: Rethinking a Demographic Crisis, has been published by Harvard University Press, one of the world’s leading scholarly presses. For most of humankind, it was a fact of life that poorer, less economically developed countries experienced early death and high mortality rates. As Prof. Sivaramakrishnan’s book demonstrates, longer lives have enormous implications for developing nations. The book analyzes the ways that the demographic transformations of developed and emerging economies have been translated into social policies. The book traces the genealogy of aging and chronic disease on a global stage, and examines how social scientists, gerontologists, demographers, and activists have defined the issue of global aging. Leading scholars in the field of aging and global health have described the book as “superb,” “ground-breaking,” and “essential reading.”

Prof. Sivaramakrishnan plays many roles in SMS and across Columbia University. She is a core faculty member in SMS’s Center for the History and Ethics of Public Health. She teaches a course in SMS, The Global Politics of Aging, as well as a course in the Columbia History Department, Encounters with Nature: History of Environment, Health, and Populations in South Asia. She also teaches Life Course and Globalization and Global Health in the Mailman Core Curriculum. She directs the MPH certificate in the Health of an Aging Society, and she is currently serving as the interim co-director of the Robert N. Butler Columbia Aging Center and as faculty director of the Yusuf Hamied Faculty Exchange Program, in collaboration with the Columbia Global Center, Mumbai.