Dr. Anderson studies the relationship between social change and economic change and demographic change. Her research focuses on the former Soviet Union, China and South Africa. Her teaching centers on the relationship between social and demographic change and on technical demography. Among the questions worked on in South Africa, are African and coloured infant and child survival, causes and patterns of adult mortality, trends in orphanhood, perceptions of environmental problems and actions taken to address these problems, changes in material standard of living and characteristics of the growing African middle class.