PUBLICATIONS

teaching

consulting

data visualization

CV (2023)

CONTACT

I am an Associate Professor at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo in the ​Department of Social Sciences. My academic training is in Demography ​(PhD, UC Berkeley), International Agricultural Development (MS, UC ​Davis), and Environmental Sciences (BS, UC Berkeley). I received my ​postdoctoral training at Princeton University in their Institute for ​International and Regional Studies.

My teaching and research fall at the intersection of the three areas in ​which I received my academic training (demography, environment, and ​agricultural development), and I particularly enjoy studying family ​behaviors, water access, and on-farm decision-making during periods of ​social and environmental change and uncertainty. My work has been ​published in California Agriculture, Climatic Change, Climate Risk ​Management, Demography, Journal of Marriage and Family, Population ​and Development Review,Social Science & Medicine, World ​Development, and elsewhere.

I have extensive experience designing surveys and collecting data, both ​here in California and abroad. I have consulted for non-profit, ​educational, and government agencies. Discovering data-driven answers ​to complex problems is the best part of my job.

SOCIAL AND FAMILY DEMOGRAPHY

Daniela R Urbina, Margaret Frye, and Sara Lopus. 2024. “No end to hypergamy ​when considering the full married population,” Population and Development Review.

Sara Lopus and Margaret Frye (equal authorship). 2020. “Intramarital status ​differences across Africa’s educational expansion,” Journal of Marriage and ​Family.

Margaret Frye and Sara Lopus (equal authorship). 2018. “From privilege to prevalence: Contextual effects of women’s schooling on African marital timing,” Demography.

*Article of the Year Award*

AMERICAN SOCIOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION Family Section

Sara Lopus. 2017. “Relatives in residence: Relatedness of household members drives schooling differentials in Mozambique,” Journal of Marriage and Family.

POPULATION, ENVIRONMENT, AND AGRICULTURE

Nupur Joshi, Sara Lopus, Corrie Hannah, Kacey C. Ernst, Aminata P. Kilungo, Romanus Opiyo, Margaret N’gayu, Julia Davies, and Tom Evans. 2022. “COVID-19 lockdowns: Employment disruptions, water access, and hygiene practices in informal settlements in Nairobi.” Social Science & Medicine.

Zack Guido, Sara Lopus, Kurt Waldman, Andy Zimmer, Corrie Hannah, Natasha Krell, Kelly Caylor, and Tom Evans. 2021. “Perceived links between climate change and weather forecast accuracy: New barriers to tools for agricultural decision-making.” Climatic Change.

Corrie Hannah, Stacey Giroux, Natasha Krell, Sara Lopus, Laura McCann, Andrew Zimmer, Kelly Caylor, and Tom Evans. 2021. “Has the vision of a gender quota rule been realized for community-based water management committees in Kenya?” World Development.

Sara Lopus, Paul McCord, Drew Gower, and Tom Evans. 2017. “Drivers of farmer satisfaction with small-scale irrigation systems,” Journal of Applied Geography.

Sara Lopus, Maria Paz Santibanez, Robert H. Beede, Roger A. Duncan, John P. Edstrom, Franz J. A. Niederholzer, Cary Trexler, and Patrick H. Brown. 2010. “Survey examines the adoption of perceived best management practices for almond nutrition,” California Agriculture.

QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS

MIGRATION

SOCIOLOGY OF THE ENVIRONMENT

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT FOR SOCIOLOGISTS

COMPARATIVE SOCIETIES

WORLD POPULATION PROCESSES

CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN SOCIETIES

ENVIRONMENT AND MIGRATION

ECONOMIC DEMOGRAPHY

THE POWER OF NUMBERS:

INTRODUCTION TO QUANTITATIVE SOCIAL SCIENCES

I have nearly two decades' experience acting as a quantitative and mixed-methods consultant for non-​profit, educational, and government agencies. In past projects, I have supported organizations by ​identifying opportunities for efficient operations, investigating user decision-making, researching ​effective curriculum, and gathering and compiling demographic data to inform grant development.

Working as both team member and supervisor, I have taken the lead on questionnaire design, sampling ​design, data analysis, data visualization, and report writing. When applying my academic expertise in ​statistical and demographic methods to real-world problems, I bring my full attention to discovery of data-​driven solutions and actionable insights.

STAGES OF THE DEMOGRAPHIC TRANSITION, WITH DATA FROM Brazil

Figure by Sara Lopus. Socius.

Although these data come from only ​a single country (Brazil), the patterns ​of change are representative of ​those experienced in many other ​countries.

Drops in mortality generally precede ​drops in fertility, causing the rate of ​natural increase to rise. This leads to ​rapid increases in population size.

Fertility and mortality rates ​eventually equalize at a low rate, but ​the population has stabilized at a far ​higher number than pre-transition. A ​possible post-transition stage, ​marked by further population aging ​and declining population size, is ​projected.

1870-1950 data from Chesnais 1992. ​1950-2075 data from the UN.

VISUALIZING AFRICA'S EDUCATIONAL GENDER GAP

Figure by Sara Lopus and Margaret Frye (equal authorship). Socius.

The horizontal axis displays educational access, and vertical lines represent educational gender gaps for 267 country-specific birth cohorts, representing adults born between 1941 and 1992 in 32 African countries. In early stages of educational expansion, boys enter school at higher rates than girls; female enrollment begins to catch up only when at least half of the cohort attends school. Cohorts with the lowest educational access are disproportionately located in West Africa, and most higher-access cohorts are in central and southern Africa. In more than 30 percent of cohorts from central and southern African countries, girls surpass boys in rates of basic educational participation. Africa’s gender inequality is structured not only by regional context and temporal trends but also by a country’s position along the spectrum from scarcity to abundance of educational opportunities.

Data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). wesanderson color palette (Karthik).

MARITAL HAZARD RATES OVER TIME, BY EDUCATIONAL ATTAINMENT

Figure by Sara Lopus and Margaret Frye (equal authorship). Demography.

In Africa and elsewhere, educated women tend to marry later than their less-educated peers. Using data from 30 countries and 246 birth cohorts across sub-Saharan Africa, we determine that within countries over time, the marital ages of women from different educational groups tend to diverge as educational access expands. This within-country divergence is most often driven by lower marital hazard (i.e. later marriage) among highly educated women, although divergence in some countries is driven by earlier marriage among women who never attended school.

Data from the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS).