College-to-Work Transition and the College-Educated Working Class

I examine inequalities in the transition from college to work, focusing on the rise of the college-educated working class and its sociopolitical implications. This research highlights how members of this emerging group interpret and respond to economic distress and insecurity differently from the traditional, less-educated working class. I also co-direct a research initiative dedicated to studying the growing education-based stratification within the working class.

Political Demography

A second line of my research investigates how structural population shifts shape democratic progress and erosion across global contexts. This work shows that demographic change has profound yet varied impacts on democracy, and its effects often exhibit nonlinear patterns and are conditioned by prevailing socioeconomic and institutional contexts.

Alongside these two main areas, I continue my earlier work on migration and immigration, examining how these processes structure economic and sociopolitical inequalities in both sending and receiving societies. My work adopts a multidisciplinary approach that bridges sociology, demography, and political science. It spans diverse settings, including but not limited to the United States and China, with some projects taking a comparative perspective to assess the role of institutional contexts.

In my research, I draw on a variety of quantitative, qualitative, and computational methods and engage in original data collection through surveys, experiments, in-depth interviews. My major data collection projects, carried out in collaboration with colleagues, include:

1. A national survey on migration and families in China (2012-2013)

2. A survey experiment on racial attitudes throughout the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States (2020-2022);

3. A survey experiment of U.S. hiring managers that examines employer’s evaluation of and response to college graduates with different employment histories and political orientations (2023-2025);

4. A five-country survey experiment on how institutional and sociopolitical environments in destination countries shape migration aspirations and decisions (2025-2026);

5. An ongoing mixed-methods study (survey and in-depth interviews) examining the economic, sociocultural, and civic lives of the college-educated working class, with comparison to both the traditional less-educated working class and college graduates in the middle and upper classes.

My research has been supported by 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. It has also been featured in outlets such as The Economist, Los Angeles Times, Reuters, CNN, and CNBC.