Remote work is not going away. But loneliness at work is real. I spoke with Science News about what we should take from the growing evidence on remote work, isolation, and mental health. The answer is not blanket return-to-office mandates. www.sciencenews.org/article/remo...

Remote workers feel isolated. Back-to-office mandates are not a fix

Making social connection part of job design, whether people work remotely, hybrid or in-person, is key to supporting employees‘ well-being.

sciencenews.org

New piece out today in Science with @rourkeobrien.bsky.social. Remote work gave many people flexibility. It also changed how workers build everyday connection, support, mentoring, and belonging. www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

The lost social infrastructure of work

Remote work has substantially increased social isolation, with measurable consequences for mental health

science.org

Fine, perceptive essay by @dremmazang.bsky.social on intersection of the fertility crisis and the AI revolution in China (but applies more broadly): Without reforms to improve wages, housing access, and childcare, automation could entrench a low-fertility crisis and destabilise the social contract.

Opinion | Why China’s AI automation push is a risky social experiment

Without reforms to improve wages, housing access and childcare, automation could entrench a low-fertility crisis and destabilise the social contract.

scmp.com

Hard to believe the Yale Conference on AI in the Social Sciences is happening next week. Only a couple of spots remain due to space constraints. Last chance to register: yalefds.swoogo.com/socialscienc... Looking forward to welcoming everyone to Yale!

Done with #APSAVRM26. Looking forward to presenting the same paper at the @yaledatascience.bsky.social. FDS workshop on AI for social science research methods organized by @dremmazang.bsky.social, Daniel Karell, Tong Wang and @harshparikh.bsky.social. fds.yale.edu/events/fds-w...

Excited to share that our Life-Course Cognitive Inequality Workshop now has a website! You can find the full program and event details here: sites.google.com/view/2026-ya... Registration is now open and closes on May 6. We encourage you to sign up soon and hope to see many of you at Yale.

2026 Yale Cognition Workshop

About the Workshop

sites.google.com

Our AI in Social Science conference notifications are out—congrats to everyone who was accepted! 🎉 We have an incredible lineup of presenters across disciplines: yalefds.swoogo.com/socialscienc...

In China, divorce can mean this: He keeps the house. Her unpaid work barely counts. And yet, more women are still choosing to leave. I spoke with The Economist: www.economist.com/china/2026/0...

Soaring numbers of Chinese women demand divorce

They are defying state efforts to make it harder

economist.com

We are still hiring!! Multiple positions open. Interviews will be on a rolling basis.

Emma Zang@dremmazang.bsky.social · 4mo ago

We’re hiring postdocs and predocs at Yale (ZCAFE) working on AI and social science methods.

Excited that Z-CAFE will present two panels at the Yale AI Symposium: one on building a next-generation neighborhood disadvantage index using multimodal data (images + surveys), and another on using LLMs to experimentally test how data presentation shapes human and machine judgment.

We’re hiring postdocs and predocs at Yale (ZCAFE) working on AI and social science methods.

We’re blown away by the response to our call for submissions for the Yale AI Social Science Conference — around 170 submissions in just one month!

What happens when a country automates before building a stable middle class? China’s AI push is often framed as inevitable. But it may also be a risky social experiment, with consequences for inequality, fertility, and the social contract. My latest op-ed: www.scmp.com/opinion/chin...

Opinion | Why China’s AI automation push is a risky social experiment

Without reforms to improve wages, housing access and childcare, automation could entrench a low-fertility crisis and destabilise the social contract.

scmp.com

Hot take for the future of peer review: Journals should start asking for a lightweight AI-based replication check (e.g., via Claude) at submission.

Did remote work increase fertility? The answer is yes, but only for some women. Paper: papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

Two weeks left to submit! Confirmed participants include Kosuke Imai, @5harad.com, Jeremy Freese, Siwei Cheng, Jessica Hullman, Adam Berinsky, Yiqing Xu, @jugander.bsky.social, and many others.

Emma Zang@dremmazang.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Another highlight: We will host a panel on publishing AI research, featuring editors from American Sociological Review, American Journal of Political Science, Management Science, and Sociological Methodology.

Another highlight: We will host a panel on publishing AI research, featuring editors from American Sociological Review, American Journal of Political Science, Management Science, and Sociological Methodology.

Emma Zang@dremmazang.bsky.social · 5mo ago

Call for Submissions: AI for Social Science Methodology (Yale) • Keynote: @nachristakis.bsky.social • Panel with editors of leading journals on publishing AI research • Mentoring roundtables for early-career scholars • Generous travel support Discussion-driven, high-quality research.

Call for Submissions: AI for Social Science Methodology (Yale) • Keynote: @nachristakis.bsky.social • Panel with editors of leading journals on publishing AI research • Mentoring roundtables for early-career scholars • Generous travel support Discussion-driven, high-quality research.

Yale FDS Conference on May 21-22: AI for Social Science Methodology. Registration is opening soon.

New paper out in Demography. We revisit one of the field’s core assumptions that people remain continuously married and living with a spouse across later life and show that this pathway is no longer the dominant one.

You still have 2 weeks to submit your work!

Emma Zang@dremmazang.bsky.social · 7mo ago

Hope everyone is having a restful break! A reminder that you still have two full months to submit to our upcoming workshop “New Data, Methods, and Theory: Life-Course Cognitive Inequality”, to be held at Yale on May 11–12, 2026. 🗓 Submission deadline: March 1, 2026 📩 Decisions: March 9, 2026

Hope everyone is having a restful break! A reminder that you still have two full months to submit to our upcoming workshop “New Data, Methods, and Theory: Life-Course Cognitive Inequality”, to be held at Yale on May 11–12, 2026. 🗓 Submission deadline: March 1, 2026 📩 Decisions: March 9, 2026

Travel Plans in Dec and Jan: Dec 9: NYC Reducing Inequality Network (NYU) Dec 10-11: Asia Society annual meeting (NYC)

[Call for Extended Abstracts/Papers] New Data, Methods, and Theory: Life-Course Cognitive Inequality We are inviting submissions for the interdisciplinary conference New Data, Methods, and Theory: Life-Course Cognitive Inequality, to be held at Yale University on May 11-12, 2026.

[Due to huge interests in this, I post it here as well] I came across this interesting demography problem on X. It looks obvious until you actually think about it. And if you ask GPT, it will not give you the correct answer!

Thrilled to be serving on the postdoc selection committee this year! If you’re working on social applications of LLMs or causal inference using observational data, I’d love to see your application!

Nicholas A. Christakis@nachristakis.bsky.social · 9mo ago

Yale’s Institute for Foundations of Data Science (FDS) @yaledatascience.bsky.social is seeking applications for postdoctoral positions. These are cool, generously supported, competitive positions, expected to last 2-3 years, for independent scholars working on the foundations of data science.

I talked about the fertility issues in China in this article: www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

China Enforced Strict Population Controls for Decades. Encouraging Births Is Far Harder

A Chinese steel city has doubled down on pro-natalist policies in search of an elusive baby bump.

bloomberg.com

See many of you next Friday!

Had a great time at the Remote Work Conference last week! It’s been a while since I’ve attended such an intellectually stimulating and welcoming event.

Just posted a new working paper on SSRN! We pit rule-based, machine learning, and various LLM methods against each other to classify social outcomes (like gender, custody, and housing) from Chinese divorce judgments. What can human–machine disagreement teach us about validity and inference?