The Cornell Population Program’s progress toward its goal of becoming a leading center for national and international demographic research has been significantly boosted by a $1.15 million grant awarded by the National Institutes of Health.

Each year, the NIH’s Demographic and Behavioral Science Branch awards one such grant to a new program showing the greatest promise of becoming a top population research center. The grant money, which began to flow on August 15 of this year, will be spread over a five-year period.

It will be used to support the development of the CPP’s infrastructure as well as its research, which focuses on three main areas: families and children, health behaviors and disparities, and poverty and inequality.