Current research projects
I am currently working on several projects that examine inequality, economic development, or both. Below are brief descriptions of some of the projects I am most excited about.
Links to my published work are in my CV and also at my Google Scholar page.
Cumulative Job Quality and Older Adulthood Health (with Xiaowen Han)
The polarization of job quality across American work has been one of the more consequential dimensions of the current era of rising inequality. Although previous research shows that changes in job quality affect individual health and wellbeing in relatively narrowly defined timespans, it is unclear whether job quality has an effect on health beyond the more immediate association. In the current study, we use 29 waves of data from the NLSY79 to examine how the career-long accumulation of job quality affects physical and mental health in late middle age and early older adulthood. We find a robust positive association between accumulated job quality and multiple dimensions of health that cannot be fully reduced to contemporaneous or near-contemporaneous measures of job quality. Magnitudes of association are comparable to similar stratification dimensions. The current study reaffirms and extends the mechanisms linking job quality and health.
The Right to Work and Economic Dynamism in US Counties, 1946-2019 (with Alec Rhodes)
Do state Right to Work (RTW) laws unleash economic dynamism? Although the specific goals of RTW laws to loosen union security agreements appear to narrowly target unionized firms, proponents and opponents alike argue that RTW laws have broad labor market consequences. Union monopoly, institutionalist, and power resources theories suggest divergent hypotheses for the likely impacts of RTW on economic dynamism. We provide a novel test of these hypotheses using 3/4 of a century of County Business Patterns data and spatial regression discontinuity methods to address unobserved heterogeneity. We fail to find strong evidence that RTW passage is associated with meaningful increases in employment or establishments. We develop a spatial policy mitigation perspective that highlights how policymakers respond to policies in neighboring states to help explain this null result. Consistent with our arguments, we find that non-RTW states made tax and incentive policy more attractive for employers during this period.
Public Sector Union Membership and Black-White Earnings Inequality (with Regina Baker and Jessie Himmelstern)
To what extent does union membership reduce earnings disparities between Black and White workers in the public sector? Public sector union membership has become increasingly central for union membership and power in recent decades, and recent research shows that public sector unions are especially advantageous for the earnings of Black men and women. In the current paper, we use Current Population Survey data from 1983-2024 to critically interrogate the union earnings premium among Black and White public sector workers. Although we find that White women and Black men and women have higher union earnings premiums compared to White men, several critical caveats complicate main results. These differences are found prior to 2000, and the inclusion of individual fixed effects remove most of the difference. Moreover, these premiums are primarily found among higher educated workers, where education premia are much larger than union premia. Our results contribute to recent studies synthesizing stratification literature on race and ethnicity and stratification literature on labor.
Gender Differences in Regret of Field of Study (with Natasha Quadlin)
Who regrets their field of study? Currently, focus is on the demise of the humanities and the rise of STEM, particularly Computer Science, as economic returns stratify across college majors based on their field of study selection. We use multiple waves of the Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking to examine gendered perceptions of field of study regret. We highlight a critical gendered pattern: women in Computer Science express unusually high levels of regret of their field of study choice. Results can partially, but not fully, be explained by socioeconomic differences between men and women holding these degrees. We argue that the combination of gendered patterns of socioeconomic returns, occupational segregation, and gendered workplace cultures help explain these patterns. They also highlight a core challenge for those hoping to open access to Computer Science in terms of a broader conception of wellbeing.
The Unions of these Happy States: Deunionization and Happiness Inequality in the United States
Do labor unions influence the happiness of workers? While stratification research agrees that unions positively affect worker economic wellbeing and reduce inequality, and while happiness studies agree that economic inequality and reduced relative economic standing decrease happiness, whether the decline of labor unions has influenced change in happiness over time is unknown. I draw on theories of relative deprivation, status comparison, and the moral economy to develop expectations linking union decline directly and indirectly to change in happiness. I test expectations by merging data from the Current Population Survey and the General Social Survey between years 1972 and 2018. Results shows that labor unions positively affect happiness, independent of economic and demographic conditions.
