Research

I study the patterns, sources, and consequences of inequality in advanced industrial societies. Much of my work explores how the division of labor organizes the distribution of life chances, attitudes and beliefs, and lifestyles across time, space, and generations. Other work focuses on gender inequality in the labor market.

I'm currently working on three projects. The first project reexamines the takeoff in income inequality in advanced industrialized nations, with the goal of offering a cohesive and sociologically informed account of this takeoff. My coauthor David Grusky and I argue that rising income inequality is a consequence of class-biased institutional changes that have generated asymmetries in workers ability to extract rents. This project is an extension of my long-standing interest in occupational closure practices (e.g., licensing, certification), which can be understood as collective rent-seeking behavior, and how they affect earnings inequality.

The second project, with David Grusky and others, offers a new framework for mapping change in a multidimensional inequality "space" defined by inputs (e.g., experience, education), working conditions (e.g., type of employment contract), and outputs (e.g., income, wealth). The substantive component of the project explores the relationship between the various dimensions of inequality and how this is changing over time. The methodological component assesses how well conventional measurement approaches (e.g., SES, income, class, occupation) capture the complexity of the multidimensional inequality space and offers an empirically defensible model for measuring multidimensional inequality and poverty.

The third project examines the structure of classes in the United States, and in particular the extent to which detailed occupations (e.g., lawyer, carpenter) or aggregate classes (e.g., "service" class) capture heterogeneity in life chances, social attitudes, political behaviors, lifestyles and consumption practices, health, and demographic behaviors. I'm especially interested in class- and occupation-specific patterns of voting behavior. Together with graduate student Sarah Thebaud, I am trying to understand how married women and men weight their own and their spouse's class "interests" in deciding for whom to vote.

I also have a long-standing interest in the sources and contours of gender inequality in the labor market. I have published several articles on the distribution of men and women across occupations in the United States and how it has changed over time. I also recently completed a study of the wage effects of "family-friendly" personnel policies such as flextime and telecommuting.

Publications

For a complete list, see my CV.

Many of my publications can be accessed through my personal site.