Inequality Discussion Group

This biweekly* discussion group brings together Cornell faculty and graduate students from around campus to discuss and improve their in-progress research. Inequality Discussion Groups in Spring 2024 will be held in-person unless otherwise noted. Please email inequality@cornell.edu for information on accessing the workshops.

Wednesdays from 3:30pm - 4:30pm in Uris G08

Interested in presenting at one of our future workshops? Contact us!


Spring 2024 Discussion Group Presentations

January 31
Peter Rich (Sociology and Public Policy, Cornell)
Policy Backlash or Structural Inertia? White Residential Decline from Desegregating City School Districts, 1970-1990

February 14
Senan Hogan-Hennessy (Ph.D Student, Economics)
Stagnating State Funding for Higher Education and its Effect on Faculty at US Universities

March 6
Wonjeong Jeong (Ph.D Candidate, Sociology)
Exploring the Dynamics of Self-Employment: A Comparison between the United States and South Korea

March 20 - New Location: 291 Clark Hall (CCSS Conference room)
Monica McDermott (Sociology, Arizona State)
Variegations in Working-Class White Attitudes towards Immigration

March 27
Hyo Joo Lee (Ph.D. Student, Sociology)
Educational Assortative Mating and Financial Investment in Children

April 24
Haowen Zheng (Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology)
Competitive Trajectories: Gendered Income Dynamics Pre- and Post-Family Migration

May 1
Tristan Ivory (International and Comparative Labor, Cornell)
Does a Rising Tide Matter Without Star Charts?: Inequality, Education, and Mobility Pathways for Contemporary Ghanaian Youth


Fall 2023 Discussion Group Presentations

September 11
Dafna Gelbgiser (Department of Labor Studies, Tel Aviv University)
Segregation, ethnic disparities in university application choices, and educational stratification: Evidence from revealed choice data

September 25: POSTPONED
Peter Rich (Sociology and Public Policy, Cornell University)
Separate and unequal options: Neighborhood educational access in the era of school choice (co-authored with Christian Sprague)

October 2
Álvaro Padilla Pozo (Sociology, Cornell University)
Poverty traps? Concentrated disadvantage and inequalities in residential neighborhood exposure

October 16
Ian Lundberg (Information Science, Cornell University)
Undefined outcomes in research on inequality: A causal approach

October 23
Lili Dodderidge (Sociology, Cornell University)
Prosecutorial Discretion and Perceptions of Place: A Work in Progress

November 6
Kim Weeden (Sociology, Cornell University)
The Sociodemographic Segregation of Students Across College Courses (with Liyu Pan '26)

November 13
Cody Reed (Sociology, Cornell University)
Do Adolescents Know What Their Parents Do? Knowledge About Parents’ Occupations in the Context of Occupational Reproduction


Spring 2023 Discussion Group Presentations

March 15
Haowen Zheng (Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology)
Social Rigidity over the Life Course: Using Machine Learning to Predict Ultimate Socioeconomic Status (with Dr. Siwei Cheng - NYU)

March 29
Boris Barron (Graduate Student, Cornell)
The Dissimilarity Index Was Never Compositionally Invariant (with Matthew Hall, Peter Rich, and Tomás Arias)

April 12
Tristan Ivory (Assistant Professor, International and Comparative Labor)
Degrees of Unfreedom: Foreign-Born University Graduate Labor Market Outcomes in Australia, Sweden, and the United States

May 3
Jacqueline Ho (Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology)
Can Every School Be a Good School? Unranking and its implications for competitive school choice in Singapore


Fall 2022 Discussion Group Presentations

August 30
Virtual meet-and-greet & short-session workshops.

September 6
Peter Rich (Assistant Professor, Sociology and Public Policy)
Inequality in the Competition for Access to High-Achieving and High-Growth Schools Across Metropolitan Area Housing Markets (with Christian Sprague and Haowen Zheng)

September 20
CANCELLED: Elizabeth C. Martin (Frank H.T. Rhodes Postdoctoral Fellow, Cornell)
Sheltered from the Storm? Political Environment and Economic Insecurity in US States

October 4
Camille Portier (PhD Student, Sociology)
Motherhood penalty and occupational characteristics in a polarized market

October 18
Cristobal Young (Associate Professor, Sociology)
Barum Park (Assistant Professor, Sociology)
Inequality in Social Capital

November 1
Iman Alsmadi (PhD Student, Sociology)
The Criminal Immigrant Myth: The Role of Conservative Media in the Immigration Industrial Complex

Ben Rosche (PhD Student, Sociology, Cornell)
Cross-SES friendships in US high schools. Who lacks them and why?

November 8
Trevor Brown (PhD Student, Government)
Reconsidering Structural Power in the American Political Economy: The Case of Non-Profit Hospital Workers and Collective Bargaining Rights

November 29
Landon Schnabel (Robert and Ann Rosenthal Assistant Professor, Sociology)
Breaking Free of the Iron Cage: A Cyclical Theory of Religious Change


Spring 2022 Discussion Group Presentations

February 8
Virtual meet-and-greet & short-session workshops.

February 22
Jarron Bowman (Sociology, Ithaca College)
Whose Unemployment Hurts More? Joblessness and Subjective Well-Being in U.S. Het Couples

March 15
Mildred Warner (City and Regional Planning, Cornell)
State Preemption, Labor Power, Local Government and Inequality

March 29
Johanna Schenner (Visiting Fellow, ILR, Cornell)
Looking beyond the binary debates of reforming or abandoning temporary foreign worker programs in US agriculture

Ben Rosche (Ph.D. Student, Sociology, Cornell)
The consolidation of socioeconomic status and race and its implication for cross-race and cross-SES friendship

April 12
Camille Portier (Ph.D. Student, Sociology, Cornell)
Gender Essentialized Occupational Skills and the Gender Wage Gap
co-authored with Vida Maralani


Fall 2021 Discussion Group Presentations

August 30
Haowen Zheng (Ph.D. Student, Sociology)
Decomposing Occupational Sex Segregation Among College Graduates: Impact of Field of Study and Gender

September 20
Celene Reynolds (Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, Sociology)
Repurposing Title IX: How Sexual Harassment Became Sex Discrimination in American Universities
In person - 423 CC - ILR Conference Center ~ Also available via Zoom

October 4
Kelly Musick (Professor, Brooks School of Public Policy and Sociology)
Parents’ Vulnerability to Job Loss and Leaving During COVID-19

Charles Petersen (Postdoctoral Fellow, History)
The Deep Origins of 'Diversity': Inside the Stanford Admissions Archives, 1890-1990

October 18
Richard Stedman (Professor, Natural Resources & the Environment) and
Robi Nilson (Ph.D. Student, Natural Resources & the Environment)
Taking off the Rose-Colored Glasses: Emerging inequality in New York State Solar Energy Development

November 1
Sadé Lindsay (Postdoctoral Associate, Policy Analysis and Management)
The Prison Credential Dilemma: How Race and Prison Credentials Shape Post-Release Employment in a Skilled Trade Labor Market

November 15
Gustavo A. Flores-Macías (Associate Professor, Government)
Crime, Social Distance, and Elite Support for Redistribution in Unequal Societies: Evidence from Mexico


Spring 2021 Discussion Group Presentations

February 15
Vida Maralani (Associate Professor, Sociology)
Intersectional inequalities by race and education in breastfeeding in the U.S. across the past century

March 1
Nicolas R. Ziebarth (Associate Professor, Policy Analysis and Management & Sloan Program in Health Administration)
Mandating Paid Sick Leave: Effects on Coverage, Utilization, and the Spread of Diseases

March 15
Radu Pârvulescu (Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology)
De-bureaucratisation, Feminisation, and Professional Inheritance

Emily Sandusky (Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology)
Do Voters Respond to Local Income Inequality? Examining Support for Raising the State Minimum Wage

March 29
Peter Rich (Assistant Professor, Policy Analysis and Management & Cornell Institute for Public Affairs)
Access denied: The effect of boundaries on White-Black gaps in access to educational opportunity

April 12
Tristan Ivory (Assistant Professor, International and Comparative Labor) with Chuling Huang (Ph.D. Candidate, ILR)
Labor of Love: Cross-Nativity Marriage and Immigrant Labor Force Participation Across European Union Member States

May 3
Meaghan Mingo (Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology)
“Stay in a Child’s Place:” Adult Authority and (Dis)respect in Schooling in the Black Belt


Fall 2020 Discussion Group Presentations

September 9
Landon Schnabel (Robert and Ann Rosenthal Assistant Professor, Sociology)
The Religious Work Ethic and the Spirit of Patriarchy: Conservative Religiosity and the Gender Gap in Working for Its Own Sake, 1977-2018

September 23
Barum Park (Assistant Professor, Sociology)
Flows and Boundaries: A Network Approach to Studying Occupational Mobility in the Labor Market (co-authored with Siwei Cheng)

October 7
Jacqueline Ho (Ph.D. Student, Sociology)
Making Sense of Social Difference: Narratives about Inequality and Meritocracy among Singaporean Youth

Camille Portier (Ph.D. Student, Sociology)
Occupational characteristics and life course health: evidence from the NLSY97

October 21
Isabel Perera (Assistant Professor, Government)
Racial Pay Parity in the Public Sector: The Overlooked Role of Employee Mobilization

November 4
Chiara Galli (Klarman Postdoctoral Fellow)
Central American Unaccompanied Minors Escape From Violence

December 2
Cristobal Young (Associate Professor, Sociology)
Millionaire Migration after the Trump Tax Cuts: Implications for Progressive Taxation


Spring 2020 Discussion Group Presentations

February 11
Sharon Sassler (Professor, Policy Analysis and Management)
Title: Opting out of Marriage? Factors Predicting Singlehood in the Fourth Decade

March 3
Phoebe Strom (Ph.D. Candidate, ILR)
Title: ‘Drawing the line’: How workplace experiences influence individual perceptions of sexual harassment

March 17
Sarah James (Postdoctoral Associate, Policy Analysis and Management)
Title: TBA

April 7
Leila Wilmers (Visiting Scholar, Loughborough University)
Title: Nationalism as an Engaged Ideology: Negotiating Dilemmas of National Continuity in Russia

April 21
Celene Reynolds (Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow, Sociology)
Title: Transforming Title IX: How Sexual Harassment Became Sex Discrimination in American Colleges and Universities

May 5
Jacqueline Ho (Ph.D. Student, Sociology)
Title: Perceptions of Inequality and Meritocracy among Singaporean Youth
&
Camille Portier (Ph.D. Student, Sociology)
Title: The effects of occupational characteristics on life course health: Evidence from NLSY97


Fall 2019 Discussion Group Presentations

September 3
Kendra Bischoff (Assistant Professor, Sociology
The Effects of Neighborhood Segregation and School Choice Policy on Jurisdiction-Level Residential Preferences
Diane Burton (Associate Professor of Human Resource Studies, ILR)
The Value of Supervision

September 17
Kelly Musick (Professor and Chair, Policy Analysis and Management) and Wonjeong Jeong (Ph.D Candidate, Sociology)
State-level Gender Inequality and Couples’ Relative Earnings Following Parenthood (with Megan Bea)
Cassandra Robertson (Postdoc, Human Ecology)
Historical Redlining and Contemporary Place Based Policy: A Case of Compensatory or Compounding Neighborhood Inequality? (with Emily Parker and Laura Tach)

October 1
Marco Albertini (Associate Professor, Political and Social Sciences, University of Bologna)
Social class, work-related incomes and socio-economic polarization in Europe, 2005-2014
Co-sponsored by the Cornell Population Center

October 22
Annalisa Raymer (Lecturer, Development Sociology)
Learning Cities: Bridging Intergenerational Lifelong Learning and Sustainable Development Goals

November 5
Benjamin Rosche (Ph.D. Student, Sociology)
Cross-Class Friendship and Intergenerational Mobility in the United States

November 19
Palashi Vaghela (Ph.D. Student, Information Science)
Title: TBA

December 3
Erin McCauley (Ph.D. Student, Policy Analysis and Management)
Detained Potential: Associative Stigma and the Educational Detainment of Children of Incarcerated Parents
 

*In most cases, we meet biweekly. However, due to breaks and scheduling conflicts with the University, this is not always the case.

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