Nice reminder from Richard Feynman of some of the benefits of teaching.
Tom VanHeuvelen
@tvanheuvelen.bsky.social
Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota My blog: https://asocial.substack.com/
Friends don't let friends continue to give exams and papers that are not adapted to the current AI landscape www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty... (this is AFTER 27 bailed so the reality is even worse) PS Props to students 1, 22, and 31
Very cool forthcoming ASR by @aeppli.bsky.social . Relevant for those interested in inequality, job quality, organizations. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
Congrats to Prof. @mathuclair.bsky.social who received the William Julius Wilson Early Career Award from the American Sociological Association's IPM Section! @asa-ipm.bsky.social @asanews.bsky.social sociology.stanford.edu/news/matt-cl...
Matt Clair receives William Julius Wilson early career award | Department of Sociology
Associate Professor Matt Clair has been awarded the William Julius Wilson Early Career Award, recognizing his outstanding scholarship and significant contributions to the study of inequality, poverty,...
sociology.stanford.edu
UW-Madison Sociology is hiring! We're inviting applications for an assistant professor position in the fields of demography, soc of population, and health, to begin August 2027. Come join @uwsoc.bsky.social and the great @cdeuw.bsky.social! Apply here: jobs.wisc.edu/jobs/assista...
Assistant Professor of Sociology - Madison, Wisconsin, United States
Current Employees: If you are currently employed at any of the Universities of Wisconsin, log in to Workday to apply through the internal application process.Job Category:FacultyEmployment Type:Regula...
jobs.wisc.edu
How do individuals combine health behaviors to form adult health lifestyles? #NewPublication in our May issue finds significant yet complex parent/adult child correspondence in health lifestyles and behaviors: bit.ly/4a7lVPJ By Mahala Miller Jane S. VanHeuvelen & @tvanheuvelen.bsky.social
Pat does it again. Important - ... depressing, but important - findings.
Pat Hastings@ophastings.bsky.social · 2mo agoWhat’s happened to income-group gaps in parental spending on children in the U.S.? For the last 45 years, they just. keep. getting. wider. In a new @socarxiv.bsky.social working paper, I present updated evidence on trends in spending on childcare, education, and extracurricular activities.
Ed Cornelius (University of Minnesota-Twin Cities) is a recipient of the 2026 Dissertation Award, for “Car Wash Legacies: Lawyers, Globalization, and the Restructuring of the Brazilian Penal Field,” completed at @utoronto.ca. bit.ly/ASA26Awards
Erin Ice (University of Texas at Austin) is a recipient of the 2026 Dissertation Award, for “My Mother’s Keeper: The Singularity of Caregiving in the U.S.,” completed at @umich.edu. bit.ly/ASA26Awards
Woohoo!! Congrats Jillian!! @umnsociology.bsky.social
American Sociological Association@asanews.bsky.social · 2mo agoJillian LaBranche @princeton.edu is a recipient of the 2026 Dissertation Award Honorable Mention for “Violence in the Classroom: Negotiating Historical Narratives in Rwanda and Sierra Leone,” completed at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. bit.ly/ASA26Awards
“Effect of the Great Recession on U.S. Fertility”: Using a cohort discontinuity design, Wu, @nickdemark.bsky.social & Hill show “strong & credibly causal evidence” that the GR altered fertility behavior, esp. for the youngest cohorts (relative declines of 7-30%). read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...
A new Annual Review article by @arnoutvanderijt.bsky.social and colleagues worth a read. Don't let the formal modeling of luck fool you. This is one of the more interesting, and all around crazier, articles I've read recently. Super cool. www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...
Luck and Predictability in the Life Course
There is an emerging recognition among sociological theorists that luck may play a substantial role in life course achievement. There is also a nascent empirical literature that finds life outcomes to...
annualreviews.org
In “Dynamic Contributions of Chronic Diseases,” Hui Zheng found half of the ↑ gap in activity limitations was assoc w/ ↑ disability probabilities “linked to mental illness, lung diseases & musculoskeletal conditions” among those w/o a college degree. @utoronto.ca read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...
UPDATE + we get to celebrate a win: Yesterday the U.S. House PASSED the Faster Labor Contracts Act, which would make it easier for workers to secure a first union contract without unnecessary delay. 🎉
U.S. House could soon pass legislation making it easier for workers to secure a first union contract
Update: The U.S. House passed the Faster Labor Contracts Act on June 9. Over the last five years, workers have won unions in several high-profile campaigns, including Amazon workers in Staten Island ...
epi.org
Economic Policy Institute@epi.org · 2mo agoFar too often, employers refuse to bargain in good faith w/ workers when they win a union, significantly delaying a first contract. Today, the U.S. House could pass the Faster Labor Contracts Act, which would make it easier for workers to secure a first union contract w/o unnecessary delay. 1/4
Could be updated, but to a close approximation they used to stop 50-100 people a day for speeding/red lights/DWI suspicion etc. Then they just decided not to do that from about June 2020.
"Family Networks and Childcare Choices: A Predictive Machine Learning Approach" Just out in our journal, @sociologicalsci.bsky.social
Sociological Science@sociologicalsci.bsky.social · 2mo agoNEW: Nicolás Soler, Tom Emery, Agnieszka Kanas, "Family Networks and Childcare Choices: A Predictive Machine Learning Approach" sociologicalscience.com/articles-v13...
Some remarks and evidence on the interesting report of the Onderwijsraad (Education Council) on standardized testing. Standardized testing in the Dutch educational system > open.substack.com/pub/hermwerf...
Standardized testing in the Dutch educational system
Some comparative evidence in light of the Education Council Report on the Dutch testing culture
open.substack.com
Delighted to have had the opportunity to talk to the legend that is @durlauf.bsky.social about inequality and the division of labor.
UChicago | Stone Center on Wealth Inequality & Mobility@ucstonecenter.bsky.social · 2mo ago@mivich.bsky.social argues that inequality is too large a problem to be solved through incremental changes alone. In her episode of The Inequality Podcast, she applies that same structural lens to the changing nature of work, examining why job responsibilities keep expanding. Listen: bit.ly/4vtapq9
Stratification research in sociology and sister fields open.substack.com/pub/hermwerf...
The Rise of Stratification Research in Sociology, Economics, and Political Science
How social stratification became increasingly studied in sister fields of sociology
open.substack.com
lol, what!? One of the weirder Social Forces book reviews ever I've seen. Going out on a limb and guessing Wimer has a negative view of Kenworthy's book?
Great news here. This was a v interesting book to read, highly recommend. I assigned it as one of the possible books to read in a book club project in my undergrad inequality course. The students who read Doubled Up were super, super engaged w the book. Really fired up about it.
Karen Benjamin Guzzo@karenguzzo.bsky.social · 2mo agoCongratulations to @hopeharvey.bsky.social, this year's winner of the ASA Sociology of Population Section's Otis Dudley Duncan Book Award! press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
It seems we are now entering a new phase of the rise of inequality in the US. It's not just wealth and billionaires — it's a broader acceleration. Here's who benefited from economic growth in 2025, according to the latest estimates available on realtimeinequality.org
Such an important point, and one that I have yet to hear addressed by administrators who are pushing faculty to explore "radical innovation" with AI in their research and pedagogy. ("Radical" here means "radical but within the bounds of acceptability for an inherently conservative institution.")
Robert Komaniecki@komaniecki.bsky.social · 2mo agoPerhaps most significantly, he did not address cost. My first question after his talk was what will happen if academics fully integrate AI into their curricula while the technology is still being subsidized by venture capital--who eventually will pay when the price arrives?
If you're interested in job quality, the AJQS is a fabulous new source of data. Check it out.
Upjohn Institute@upjohninstitute.bsky.social · 3mo agoWhen we think about the quality of jobs, we often think about what they pay—but we ignore the many other aspects that make a job good or bad. The American Job Quality Study (AJQS) was created to capture a more complete picture of job quality in the United States. buff.ly/NwPbAF2 #econsky #jobs
Whoa! "When Walmart Supercenter openings do occur, union membership declines by an average of 3.5 percentage points...Remaining union members are not protected against Walmart’s downward pressure on earnings." Very imp. looking new article.
Zach Parolin@zparolin.bsky.social · 2mo agoWith @joshuachoper.bsky.social & @lukaslehner.bsky.social in the American Sociological Review, we ask: What happens to organized labor when Walmart Supercenters enter a local labor market? Broadly, how do worker power and buyer power interact to shape inequality? journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
What inequality-related articles from 2025 should sociologists be reading? The IPM Section is creating a community-sourced reading list of notable 2025 articles on inequality, poverty, mobility, stratification, and related topics. Submit your recommendations here: forms.gle/QWQuLZfVc5y3...
Shifting returns to education, not educational inequality, is the main force driving intergenerational income persistence today. doi.org/10.1093/sf/s... Proud supervisor moment to see this out in @sfjournal.bsky.social
Here's that preprint. We take a look at the use of common replication-crisis reforms such as pre-analysis plans in observational sociology. How can these reforms function outside experiments, when the goal of controlling false positives loses relevance? @socarxiv.bsky.social osf.io/preprints/so...
Cool historical inequality work by Alfani. He also wrote a great book, As Gods Among Men. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
As Gods Among Men
press.princeton.edu
Economic History Review@echistsocreview.bsky.social · 3mo agoNow on Early View: 'Economic inequality and social mobility in preindustrial societies: What we know, what we don't (but should) know'. By Guido Alfani. @guidoalfani.bsky.social @dondenacentre.bsky.social @stone-lis.bsky.social @cuny.edu #EHS100 onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...