Andrew A. Beveridge, a sociology professor and demographer who mined arcane census data to inform urban planning decisions, court rulings on racial desegregation and news coverage that identified emerging population trends, died on April 10 in Washington. He was 79.
The cause was a heart attack he suffered while attending the annual Population Association of America meeting at the Marriott Marquis hotel, his wife, Fredrica Beveridge, said.
Dr. Beveridge, who lived in Bronxville, N.Y., was a professor emeritus of sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where he served as chairman of the sociology department from 2006 to 2018. He also directed the university’s Applied Social Research program and helped establish its Institute for Demographic Research.
In 1999, he and the software engineer Ahmed Lacevic founded a data-driven academic research group called Social Explorer. Eight years later, they turned that think tank into a company that uses interactive maps and other online tools to translate raw statistics into relevant population projections, offering guidance to public policymakers, nonprofit institutions, scholars, journalists and businesses.
Dr. Beveridge and his teams at City University and at Social Explorer worked with reporters and editors from The New York Times, beginning in 1993, to explore social trends and the changing demographic profile of New York and the nation.
That collaboration yielded a number of insights, most notably that the median income of Black households in Queens, the city’s quintessential middle-class borough, had surpassed that of white New Yorkers there; that income gaps among the city’s residents exceeded those in some undeveloped countries; that the historic phenomenon of white flight had not only slowed, but reversed; and that Venezuelans accounted for the largest number of new immigrants in New York.
Among his books was “New York and Los Angeles: An Uncertain Future” (2013), edited with David Halle, a sociology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.
“Andy was a champion for the national community of census-data users,” Joseph J. Salvo, the former chief demographer and director of the population division of New York’s Department of City Planning, said in an interview.
“He informed debates about the population of the nation, the state and the city with his keen eye for patterns in the data and a sixth sense for anomalies — things that just did not make sense,” Mr. Salvo continued. “When one appeared, he would work tirelessly with his many colleagues to address the issue and propose solutions.”
John H. Mollenkopf, a distinguished professor of political science and sociology at CUNY and the director of the Center for Urban Research at the Graduate Center, said in an email: “Andy was not afraid to question the received wisdom or call out the experts when he thought they were doing something wrong or silly. And he usually got them to rethink their approach.”
Andrew Alan Beveridge was born on April 27, 1945, in Madison, Wis. His father, Jacob Beveridge, was a salesman; his mother was Bonnie Belle (Porter) Beveridge.
Dr. Beveridge began his higher education at the California Institute of Technology, intent on a career in science and math. In his sophomore year, he transferred to Yale University, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in economics in 1967, a Master of Philosophy in sociology in 1971 and a doctorate in sociology in 1973.
In 1970, he married Fredrica Rudell, who went on to become a professor of marketing at Iona College (now Iona University) in New Rochelle, N.Y., and the secretary-treasurer of Social Explorer.
Dr. Beveridge worked at Columbia University, as an assistant and associate professor, from 1973 to 1981, when he joined Queens College and the Graduate Center. He retired in 2020.
In the late 1980s, he served as president of the Yonkers Board of Education and helped oversee the court-ordered desegregation of the city’s school system. At the time, he said that the order had forced the city to fund educational improvements that otherwise would not have happened.
In addition to his wife, he is survived by their daughter, Sydney Beveridge, and a granddaughter.
As a go-to sociologist, Dr. Beveridge was so knowledgeable that during a conversation on almost any subject he was bound to digress.
“What started as a quick comment might turn into a five-minute riff on zoning codes in 1970s Yonkers, heteroscedasticity or the demographic history of East Flatbush,” Mr. Musslewhite said. “You went along because he was always fascinating.”
Sam Roberts is an obituaries reporter for The Times, writing mini-biographies about the lives of remarkable people.
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