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 2025 will be held in-person on select Wednesdays from Noon - 1:00pm in Uris 360 . Please email inequality@cornell.edu for information on accessing the workshops.
Interested in presenting at one of our future workshops? Contact us!
Spring 2025 Discussion Group Presentations
February 19
Laura Sullivan (Public Policy, Cornell)
Developing Moves to Opportunity: Understanding the Residential Mobility Patterns of Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Tenants
March 5
Haowen Zheng (Sociology, Cornell)
Occupational Restructuring and the Decline of Internal Migration across Local Labor Markets by College Status, 1980-2019
March 19
Zhipeng Zhou (Sociology, Cornell)
Sectoral Differences in Employment Precarity and Labor Income Inequality: The Effect of Market Transition in China
April 23
Kelly Musick (Public Policy and Sociology, Cornell)
Safety Net Policies and Income Inadequacy at the Transition to Parenthood (with Pilar Gonalons-Pons, Chae Kim, and Meiying Li)
Fall 2024 Discussion Group Presentations
September 17
Hao Liang (Sociology, Cornell)
Intermarriage, Gender Imbalance, and Ethnic Residential Segregation in Japan
October 1
Vida Maralani (Sociology, Cornell)
Title: TBA
October 22
Neil Cholli (Economics, Cornell)
Understanding the Heterogeneity of Intergenerational Mobility across Neighborhoods (with Steven N. Durlauf, Rasmus Landersø, and Salvador Navarro)
November 5
Thelonious Goerz (Sociology, Cornell)
The Effects of Black-White Racial Segregation on Longevity
November 19
Álvaro Padilla-Pozo (Sociology, Cornell)
Revisiting the Social Autopsy of a Heat Wave: Social Isolation, Loneliness, Reclusiveness, and Heat Stress during Heat Waves
December 3
Michael Lovenheim (Economics, Cornell)
Gender and Racial Earnings Difference: Major Choices, Returns, and Welfare Consequences
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.