Research

I study inequality in advanced industrial societies, how it is organized, and how it is changing. Current projects examine the sources of rising income inequality (with David Grusky); occupational "closure" practices (e.g., licensing, educational credentialing, certification, unionization) and their impact on income inequality in the US and, in a new collaborative project led by Thijs Bol, the UK and Germany; the relationship between class membership and life chances, political views, social attitudes and cultural practices; and the form of the multidimensional inequality space.

A new project, with Steve Morgan, examines how young men and women's occupational plans are formed and change from 10th grade through college. It examines the specificity and the content of occupational plans; the effects of social background, school structure, and gender on occupational plans, especially plans to enter or exit; and the causal links between occupational plans, coursetaking, college entry, and college completion.

My other longstanding interest is in gender inequality in labor markets. Current projects look at patterns of gender segregation among doctoral recipients by field and prestige of the PhD-granting program (with Sarah Thebaud and Dafna Gelbgiser); the impact of increasingly long work hours on the gender gap in earnings (with Youngjoo Cha); and the correlates of faculty retention. A related project, still in the data coding phase, examines the departmental and network context of inter-departmental mobility and promotion in an academic labor market. Some of my past work on gender looks at how patterns of occupational segregation changed over the last century and how "family friendly" personnel policies (e.g., flextime, telecommuting) affect men and women's career outcomes.

Publications

For a complete list, see my CV.