I am a Professor of Sociology, and faculty affiliate of the Columbia Population Research Center, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy, the Data Science Institute, the Center for Pandemic Research, the China Center for Social Policy, and Institute of Latin American Studies at Columbia University. My research is at the intersection of inequality, demography, and politics, and primarily focuses on 1) the influence of demographic forces on political processes, 2) the sources of inequality by gender, race/ethnicity, and nativity in the high-skilled labor markets, and 3) the impact of migration/immigration on economic and social inequality in sending and receiving societies. Within these general areas, my research cuts across a number of subfields ranging from labor markets to race and ethnicity, gender, collective action, health, and child development. My work takes a multidisciplinary approach and seeks to arrive at new findings by bringing together seemingly disparate areas of research. I conduct research across an array of socioeconomic settings, including but not limited to the United States and China. Some of my work takes a comparative approach by investigating how institutional environments shape the impact of migration on inequality and politics. My research draws on a range of quantitative methods for causal inference and has most recently incorporated computational and experimental methods. My research has been funded with grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (including a K01 Career Development Award), the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. I have also conducted two national surveys with my collaborators. The first survey focuses on migration and families in China (2012-2013). The second survey (with embedded experiments) investigates how the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped racial attitudes and relations in the United States (2020).
My current projects include:
- Inequality by Gender, Race/Ethnicity, and Nativity in the High-Skilled Labor Market of the US
- The Impact of COVID-19 on Racial Attitudes (US) and on Social Inequality (China)
- Political Demography: The Effect of Demographic Processes on Politics (Cross-National)
- Social and Political Change in China
- Immigrant Labor Market Trajectories in Canada and the US