Critical and quantitative? Squaring the circle in health and population studies.

While qualitative research presents obvious strengths for critical population studies, quantification is also essential to critical social science’s emancipatory aim. In this talk, I take feminist critiques of demography and public health seriously, to demonstrate how we can include social structure, better model distributions and heterogeneity, and use critical theory to shape research questions, within quantitative population research. Focusing on my work explaining health and reproductive inequalities, I aim to showcase how a critical quantitative approach can add to our understanding of the dynamics between power processes, institutions, social policies and population outcomes.