Newsroom Archive

William Frey

Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution and
Research Professor in Population Studies, University of Michigan

William H. Frey is an internationally regarded demographer, known for his research on urban populations, migration, immigration, race, aging, political demographics and his expertise on the U.S. Census. Frey's demographic expertise draws from his nearly three decades at the University of Michigan where he is on the faculty of the University's Institute for Social Research and Population Studies Center. He has authored well over 200 publications and several books including “Regional and Metropolitan Growth and Decline in the U.S.” (Russell Sage, 1988, with Alden Speare, Jr); “America By the Numbers: A Fieldguide to the U.S. Population” (The New Press, 2001 with Bill Abresch and Jonathan Yeasting), and “Social Atlas of the United States” (Allyn and Bacon, 2008 with Amy Beth Anspach and John Paul DeWitt). Most recently, he authored “The Great Migration Slowdown: Regional and Metropolitan Dimensions” (The Brookings Institution, 2009). At Michigan, he has directed projects with the National Science Foundation, NICHD Center for Population Research, and several foundations. He has contributed to the 1995 President's National Urban Policy Report, to HUD's State of the Cities 2000 report, and to the Russell Sage Foundation's Census research series. He has been a consultant to the U.S. Census Bureau, and a contributing editor to American Demographics magazine.

Frey has also been active in creating demographic media for use by educators, policy makers and the general public. Examples are the websites: <http://www.frey-demographer.org>; <http://www.ssdan.net>; and <http://www.CensusScope.org>. Frey received a Ph.D. in sociology from Brown University in 1974. He has been a Visiting Research Scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Austria); the Andrew W. Mellon, Research Scholar at the Population Reference Bureau in Washington, D.C., and the Hewlett Visiting Scholar at Child Trends in Washington, D.C. He previously held positions at Rutgers University, the University of Washington-Seattle, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the State University of New York at Albany.

Frey is a member of the Population Association of America, the International Union for the Scientific Study of Population, the American Sociological Association, and is a past Fellow of the Urban Land Institute. Frey is also known for his ability to communicate demographic trends to general and policy audiences. His research been written about in such diverse venues as The Economist, The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, The National Journal, The New Yorker and Forbes. His commentary and observations have been featured on broadcast media including National Public Audio's “All Things Considered”, PBS's “Newshour with Jim Lehrer”, NBC's “Nightly News”, ABC's|“World News”, CBS's “Evening News”, C-SPAN's “Washington Journal”, and print media including The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today and The Wall Street Journal.