Barbara A. Anderson is the Ronald Freedman Collegiate Professor of Sociology and Population Studies at the University of Michigan. She holds an A.B. degree in mathematics from the University of Chicago and a Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University. She been a faculty member at Yale University and Brown University, a visiting member at the Institute for Advanced Study and a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. She has conducted extensive research on the relation of population and development and the role of data and data quality in these areas. She has consulted on data and research with the governments of Estonia, China, and South Africa. She has served on the National Science Foundation Review Panel on Sociology and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Population Research Committee. She has published or edited six books and more than 100 articles and chapters.